IRISH ELOQUENCE. 

THE 

SPEECHES 

OF THE 

CELEBRATED IRISH ORATORS 

PHILIPS, CURRAN AND GRATTAN 

TO WHICH IS ADDED 

THE POWERFUL APPEAL 

OF 

ROBERT EMMETT, 

AT THE CLOSE OF HIS TRIAL FOR HIGH TREASON. 



SELECTED BY A MEMBER OF THE BAR. 



PitlatrdaJhta: 

KEY & BIDDLE— 6 MINOR STREET. 
1833. 



.17 
/^33 






SPEECHES 

OF 

CHARLES PHILLIPS, Esq. 

DELIVERED AT THE BAR, 

AND ON 

VARIOUS PUBLIC OCCASIONS IN IRELAND AND ENGLAND. 

TO WHICH IS ADDED 

A LETTER TO GEORGE IV, 



EDITED BY HIMSELF. 



THE 

FOLLOWING SPEECHES 

ARE, BY PERMISSION, 
DEDICATED TO 

WILLIAM ROSCOE, 

WITH 
THE MOST SINCERE RESPECT 

AND AFFECTION OF THEIR 

AUTHOR, 
3 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
Preface, by Mr. Finlay 5 

Speech delivered at a Public Dinner given to Mr. Finlay by the Roman Catholics of 
the Town and County of Sligo 9 

Speech delivered at an Aggregate Meeting of the Roman Catholics of Cork - - 20 
Speech delivered at a Dinner given on Dinas Island, in the Lake of Killamey, on 
Mr. Phillips's health being given, together with that of Mr. Payne, a young Ame- 
rican 31 

Speech delivered at an aggregate Meeting of the Roman Catholics of the county and 
city of Dublin 36 

Petition referred to in the preceding Speech, dravra by Mr. Phillips at the request 
of the Roman Catholics of Ireland 52 

The Address to H. R. H. the Princess of Wales, drawn by Mr. Phillips at the re- 
quest of the Roman Catholics of Ireland 54 

Speech delivered by Mr. Phillips at a public dinner given to him by the Friends of 
Civil and Religious liberty, in Liverpool 56 

Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of Guthrie v. Sterne, delivered in the Court of 
Common Pleas, Dublin 66 

Speech of Mr. Phillips in the case of O'Mullan v. M'Korkill, delivered at the County 
Court-house, Galway 83 

Speech in the case of Connaghton v. Dillon delivered in the County Court-house of 
Roscommon 100 

Speech of Mr. PhiUips in the case of Creighton v. Townsend, delivered in the Court 
of Common Pleas, Dublin 110 

Speech in the case of Blake v. Wilkins, delivered in the County Court-house, Galway 121 

A Character of Napoleon Buonaparte, down to the period of his Exile to Elba - 134 

Speech of Mr. Philhps in the case of Browne v. Blake, for crim. con. delivered in 
Dublin, on the 9th July, 1817. 138 

Speech of Mr Phillips at a meeting of the gentlemen, clergy, freeholders, and other 
inhabitants of the County of Sligo, for the purpose of taking into consideration an 
Address of Condolence to the Kin^on the Death of his Royal father, and of Con- 
gratulation to his Majesty on his Accession to the Throne 153 

Speech of Mr. Phillips delivered at the Annual Meeting of the British and Foreign 
Auxiliary Bible Society, London - 159 

LetterofMr. Phillips to George IV. October 6th, 1820. 165 

4 



PREFACE: 

BY JOHN FINLAV, ESQ. 



The Speeches of Phillips are now for the first time offered to the world in an authen- 
tic form. So far as his exertions have been hitherto developed, his admirers, and they 
are innumerable, must admit, that the text of this volume is an acknowledged reference, 
to which future criticism may fairly resort, and from which his friends must deduce any 
title which the speaker may have created to the character of an orator. 

The interests of liis reputation impose no necessity of denying many of those imper- 
fections which have been imputed to these productions. The value of all human exer- 
tion is comparative ; and positive excellence is but a flattering designation, even of the 
best products of industry and mind. 

There is, perhaps, but one way by which we could avoid all possible defects, and that 
is, by avoiding all possible exertion. The very fastidious, and the very uncharitable, may 
too often be met with, in the class of the indolent ; and the man of talent is gen- 
erally most liberal in his censiu-e, whose industry has given him least title to praise. 
Thus defects and detraction are as the spots and shadow which, of necessity, adhere and 
attach to every objectofhonom-able toil. Were it possible for the friends of Mr. Phillips to 
select those defects which could fill up the measure of unavoidable imperfection, and at 
the same tune inflict least injury on his reputation, doubtless they would prefer the blem- 
ishes and errors natural to youth, consonant to genius, and consistent with an obvious and 
ready correction. To this description, we apprehend, may be reduced all the errors that 
have been imputed through a system of wide-spreading and unwearied criticism, anima- 
ted by that envy with which indolence too oft regards the success of industry and talent, 
and subsidized by power in its struggle to repress the reputation and importance of a rajiidly 
rising young man, whom it had such good reason both to hate and fear. For it would bo 
ignorance not to know, and Icnowing, it would be affectation to conceal, that liis political prin- 
ciples were a drawback on his reputation ; and that the dispraise of these speeches has been 
a discountable quantity for the promotion of placemen and the procurement of place. 

This system of depreciation thus powerfully wielded, even to the date of the present 
publication, failed not in its energy, though it has in its object ; nay, more ; it has succeeded 
in procuring for him the beneficial results of a multiplying reaction. To borrow the ex- 
pression of an eminent classic, " the rays of their indignation collected upon liim, served 
to illumine, but could not consume ;" and doubtless, this hostility may have promoted Uiis 
fact, that the materials of this volume are at this moment read in all the languages of 
Europe ; and whatever be the proportion of their merits to their faults, they are unlikely 
to escape the attention of posterity. 

The independent reader, whom this book may introduce to a first or more correct ac- 
quaintance with his eloquence, will therefore be disposed to protect his mind against these 
illiberal prepossessions thus actively diffused, on the double consideration that some de- 
fects are essential to such and so much labour, and that some detraction may justly be ac- 
counted for by the motives of the system whoso vices he exposed. The same reader, if 
he had not the opportunity of hearing these speeches delivered by the author, will make 
in his liivour another deduction for a diflijrenl reason. 



vi PREFACE. 

The great fiillicr of ancient cloi|uence was accustomed to say, that action was the first, 
and second, and last quality of an orator. This was the dictum of a supreme authority . 
it was an exaggeration notwithstanding ; but the observation must contain much truth to 
permit such exaggeration ; and whilst we allow that delivery is not every thing, it will 
be allowed that it is much of the effect of oratory. 

Nature has been bountiful to the sulyect of these remarks in the useful accident of a 
prepossessing exterior ; an interesting figure, an animated countenance, and a demeanour 
devoid of affectation, and distinguished by a modest self-possession, give him the favour- 
able opinion of his audience, even before he has addressed them. His eager, lively, and 
sparkling eye melts or kindles in pathos or indignation ; his voice, by its compass, sweet- 
ness, and variety, ever audible and seldom loud, never hurried, inarticulate, or indistinct, 
secures to his audience every word that he utters, and preserves him from the painful 
appearance of effort. 

His memory is not less faithful in the conveyance of his meaning, than his voice : un- 
like Fox, in this respect, he never wants a word ; unUke Bushe, he never pretends to 
want one ; and unlike Grattan, he never either wants or recalls one. 

His delivery is freed from every thing fantastic — is simple and elegant, impressive and 
sincere ; and if we add the circumstance of his youth to his other external qualifications, 
none of his contemporaries in this vocation can pretend to an equal combination of these 
accidental advantages. 

If; then, action be a great part of the effect of oratory, the reader who has not heard 
him, is excluded from that consideration, so important to a right opmion, and on which 
his excellence is unquestioned. 

The ablest and severest of all the critics who have assailed him, (we allude of courso 
to the Edinburgh Review,) in their criticism on Guthrie and Sterne, have paid him an 
involuntary and miprecedented compliment. He is the only individual in these coun- 
tries to whom this literary work has devoted an entire article on a single speech ; and 
when it is recollected that the basis of this criticism was an unauthorized and incorrect 
publication of a single forensic exertion in the ordinary routine of a professional business, 
it is very questionable whether such a publication aflfordod a just and proportionate 
ground-work for so much general criticism, or a fair criteri )n of the alleged speaker's 
general merits. This criticism sums up its ol^iections, and concludes its remarks, by 
the following commending observation, — that a more strict control over his fancy 
would constitute a remedy for his defects. 

Exuberance of fancy is certainly a defect, but it is evidence of an attribute essential to 
an orator. There are few men without some judgment, but there are many men without 
any imagination ; the latter class never did, and never can produce an orator. Without 
imagination, tlie speaker sinks to the mere dry arguer, the matter-of-fact man, the calcu- 
lator, orsyllogist, or sophist ; the dealer in figures ; the compiler of facts ; the mason, but 
not the architect of the pile; for the dictate of the imagination is the inspiration of oratory, 
which imparts to matter animation and soul. 

Oratory is the great art of persuasion ; its purpose is to give, in a particular instance, a 
certain direction to human action. The faculties of the orator are judgment and imagina- 
tion : and reason and eloquence, the product of these faculties, must work on the judg- 
ment and feelings of his audience, for the attainment of his end. The speaker who 
addresses the judgment alone, may be argumentative, but never can be eloquent : for 
argument instructs without interesting, and eloquence interests without convincing; but 
oratory is neither ; it is the compound of both ; it conjoins the feelings and opinions of men ; 
it speaks to the passions through the mind, and to the mind, through the passions ; and 
leads its audience to its just purpose by the combined and powerful agency of human 
reason and human feeling. The components of this combination will vary, of course, in 
proportion to the number and sagacity of the auditory which the speaker addresses. With 
judges it is to be hoped that the passions will be weak ; with public assemblies it is to be 
lioped that reasoning will be strong ; but although the imagination may, in the first case, 



PREFACE. vii 

be unemployed, in the second it eannot be dispensed witli ; for if Ilie advocate of virtue 
avoids to address the feelings of a mixed assembly, whether it be a jury or a political 
meeting, he has no security that theit feeling, and their bad feelings, may not be brought 
into action agaiast him ; he surrenders to his enemy the strongest of his weapons, and by 
a species of irrational generosity contrives to insure his own defeat in the conflict. To 
juries and public assemblies alone, the following speeches have been addressed ; and it is 
by ascertaining their elTect on these assemblies or juries, that the merit of the exertion 
should in justice be measured. 

But there seems a general and prevalent mistake among our critics on this judgment. 
They seem to think that the taste of the individual is the standard by which tiie value of 
oratory should be decided. We do not consider oratory a mere matter of taste; it is a 
given means for the procurement of a given end ; and the fitness of its means to the attain- 
ment of its end should be in chief the measure of its merit — of tliis fitness success ought 
to be the evidence. The preacher who can melt his congregation into tears, and excel 
others in Ms struggle to convert the superfluities of the opulent into a treasury for the 
wretched; — the advocate who procures the largest compensation from juries on their 
oaths for injuries which they try; — the man who, like Mr. Phillips, can be accused (if 
ever any man was so accused except liimself ) by grave lawyers and before grave judges, 
of having procured a verdict from twelve sagacious and most respectable special jurors, 
by fascination ; of having, by the fascination of his eloquence, blinded them to that duty 
which they were sworn to observe : — the man who can be accused of this on oath, and 
the fascination of whose speaking is made a ground work, though an unsuccessful one. 
for setting aside a verdict ; — he may be wrong and ignorant in his study and practice of 
oratory ; but with all his errors and ignorance, it must be admitted, that he has in some 
manner stumbled on the shortest way for attaining the end of oratory — that is, giving 
I he most forceful direction to luiman action and determination in particular instances. 
His eloquence may be a novelty, but it is beyond example successful ; and its success 
and novelty may be another explanation for the hostility that assails. It may be matter 
of taste, but it certainly would not be matter of judgment or prudence in Mr. Phillips 
to depart from a course which has proved most successful, and whicli has procured for 
him within the last year a larger number of readers through the world, than ever in the 
same time resorted to the productions of any man of these countries. His youth carries 
with it not only much excuse, but much promise of future improvement; and doubtless 
he will not neglect to apply the fruits of study and the lights of experience to each suc- 
ceeding exertion. But his manner is his own, and every man's own manner is his best 
manner ; and so long as it works with this unexampled success, he should be slow to 
adopt the suggestions of his enemies, although he should be sedulous in adopting all legi- 
timate improvement. To that very exuberance of imagination, we do not hesitate to 
ascribe much of his success; whilst, therefore, he consents to control it, let him be care- 
ful lest he clip his wings : nor is the strength of tliis faculty an argument, although it has 
been made an argument, against the strength of his reasoning powers ; for let us slriji 
these speeches of every thing, whose derivation could be by any construction, assigned 
to his fancy ; let us apply tliis rule to his judicial and political exertions — for instance to 
the speech on Guthrie and Sterne, and the late one to the gentlemen of Liverpool — let 
their topics be translated into plain, dull language, and then we would ask, what collec- 
tion of topics could be more judicious, betterarranged, or classed in a more lucid and conse- 
cutive order by the most tiresome wisdom of the sagest arguer at the bar ? Is there not 
abundance to satisfy the judgment, even if tliere were nothing to sway the feelings, or 
gratify the imagination ? How preposterous, then, the futile endeavour to undervalue 
the solidity of the ground-work, by withdrawing attention to the beauty of the ornament; 
or to maintain the deficiency of strength in the base, merely because there appears so 
much splendour in the structure. 

Unaided by the advantages of fortune or alliance, under the frown of political power, 
and the interested detraction of professional jealousy, confining the exercise of that talent 



viii PREFACE. 

which he derives from his God to the honour, and succour, and protection of his creatures 
— this interesting and highly gifted young man runs his course like a giant, prospering 
and to prosper ;— in the court as a flaming sword, leading and lighting the injured to their 
own ; and in the public assembly exposing her wrongs— exacting her rights— conquering 
envy — trampling on corruption — beloved by his country — esteemed by a world — enjoy- 
ing and deserving an unexampled fame— and actively employing the summer of his life in 
gathering honours for his name, and garlands for his grave ! 



A SPEECH 

DELIVERED AT A PUBLIC DINNER GIVEN 

TO MR. FINLAY 

BY THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF THE TOWN AND COUNTY OF SLIGO. 



I THINK, Sir, you will agree with me, that the most experien- 
ced speaker might justly tremble in addressing you, after the 
display you have just witnessed. What, then, must I feel, who 
never before addressed a public audience 1 However, it would 
be but an unworthy affectation in me, were I to conceal from 
you, the emotions with which I am agitated by this kindness. 
The exaggerated estimate which other countries have made of 
the few services so young a man could render, has, I hope, in- 
spired me with the sentiments it ought ; but here, I do confess to 
you, I feel no ordinary sensation — here, where every object springs 
some new association, and the loveliest objects, mellowed as they 
are by time, rise painted on the eye of memory — here, where 
the light of heaven first blessed my infant view, and nature 
breathed into my infant heart, that ardour for my country which 
nothing but death can chill — here, where the scenes of my child- 
hood remind me how innocent I was, and the grave of my fathers 
admonish me, how pure I should continue — here, standing as I do 
amongst my fairest, fondest, earliest sympathies — such a welcome, 
operating, not merely as an affectionate tribute, but as a moral 
testimony, does indeed quite oppress and overwhelm me. 

Oh ! believe me, warm is the heart that feels, and willing is the 
tongue that speaks; and still, I cannot, by shaping it to my rudely 
inexpressive phrase, shock the sensibility of a gratitude too fiill 
to be suppressed, and yet (how far !) too eloquent for language. 

If any circumstance could add to the pleasure of this day, it is 
that which I feel in introducing to the friends of my youth, the 
B 9 



10 SPEECH AT SLIGO. 

friend of my adoption; though perhaps I am committing one ol 
our imputed hUuiders, when I speak of introducing one A\'hose 
patriotism has aheady rendered him famiUar to every heart in 
Ireland ; a man, who, conquering every disadvantage, and spurn- 
ing every difficulty, has poured around our misfortunes the 
splendour of an intellect, that at once irradiates and consumes 
them. For the services he has rendered to his country, from my 
heart I thank him ; and, for myself, I offer him a personal, it may 
be a selfish, tribute for saving me, by his presence this night, from 
an impotent attempt at his panegyric. Indeed, gentlemen, you can 
have little idea of what he has to endure, who in these times, 
advocates your cause. Every calumny which the venal and the 
vulgar, and the vile, are lavishing upon you, is visited with ex- 
aggeration upon us. We are called traitors, because we would 
rally round the crown an unanimous people. We are called 
apostates, because we will not persecute Christianity. We are 
branded as separatists, because of our endeavours to annihilate 
the fetters that, instead of binding, clog the connection. To 
these may be added, the frowns of power, the envy of dulness, 
the mean malice of exposed self-interest, and, it may be, in des- 
pite of all natural affection, even the discountenance of kindred ! 
— ^Well be it so, — 

For thee, fair Freedom, welcome all the past, 
For thee, my country, welcome, even the last J 

I am not ashamed to confess to you, that there was a day when 
I was bigotted as the blackest ; but I thank the Being who gifted 
me with a mind not quite impervious to conviction, and I thank 
you, who afibrded such convincing testimonies of my error. I 
saw you enduring with patience the most unmerited assaults, 
bowing before the insults of revived anniversaries; in private life, 
exemplary ; in public, unoffending ; in the hour of peace, assert- 
ing your loyalty ; in the hour of danger, proving it. Even when 
an invading enemy victoriously penetrated into the very heart of 
our country, I saw the banner of your allegiance beaming refu- 
tation on your slanderers; was it a wonder then, that I seized my 
prejudices, and with a blush burned them on the altar of my 
country ! 

The great question of Catholic, shall I not rather say, of Irish 
emancipation, has now assumed that national aspect which im- 
periously challenges the scruthiy of every one. While it was 



SPEECH AT SLTGO 11 

sliroiul(Kl in the mantle of reliii;ious mystery, with the temple for 
its sanctuary, and tlie pontiflTor its sejitinel, the vulgar eye might 
shrink and the vulgar spirit shudder, ]3ut now it has come forth, 
visible and tangible for the inspection of the laity ; and I solemn- 
ly protest, dressed as it has been in the double haberdashery 
of the English minister and the Italian prelate, I know not 
whether to laugh at its appearance, or to loathe its pretensions — 
to shudder at the deformity of its original creation, or smile at 
the grotesqueness of its foreign decorations. Only just admire 
this far-famed security bill, — this motley compound of oaths and 
penalties, which, under the name of emancipation, would drag 
your prelates with a halter about their necks to the vulgar scru- 
tiny of every village tyrant, in order to enrich a few political 
traders, and distil through some state alembic the miserable 
rinsings of an ignouant, a decaying, and degenerate aristocracy ! 
Only just admire it! Originally engendered by our friends the op- 
position, with a cuckoo insidiousness they swindled it into the nest 
of the treasury ravens, and when it had been fairly hatched with 
the beak of the one, and the nakedness of the other, they sent it 
for its feathers to Monseigneur Quarantotti, who has obligingly 
transmitted it with the hunger of its parent, the rapacity of its 
nurse, and the coxcombry of its plumassier, to be baptized by the 
bishops, and received cequo gratoqite animo by the people of Ireland ! ! 
Oh, thou sublimely ridiculous Quarantotti ! Oh, thou superlative 
coxcomb of the conclave ! what an estimate hast thou formed 
of the MIND of Ireland ! Yet why should I blame this wretched 
scribe of the Propaganda ! He had every right to speculate as 
he did; all the chances of the calculation were in his favour. 
Uncommon must be the people, over whom centuries of op- 
pression have revolved in vain! Strange must be the mind, 
which is not subdued by suffering ! Sublime the spirit which is 
not debased by servitude I God, I give thee thanks ! — he knew 
not Ireland. Bent — broken — manacled as she had been, she 
w^ill not bow to the mandate of an Italian slave, transmitted 
through an English vicar. For my own part, as an Irish Pro- 
testant, I trample to the earth this audacious and desperate ex- 
periment of authority; and for you, as Cathohcs, the time is 
come to give that calumny the lie, which represents you as sub- 
servient to a foreign influence. That influence, indeed, seems 



12 SPEECH AT SLTGO. 

not quite so unbending as it suited the purposes of bigotry to rep- 
present it, and appeal's now not to have conceded more, only 
because more was not demanded. The theology of the question 
is not for me to argue, it cannot be in better hands than in those 
of your bishops ; and I can have no doubt that when they bring 
their rank, their learning, their talents, their piety, and their 
patriotism to this subhme. deliberation, they will consult the dig- 
nity of that venerable fabric which has stood for ages, splendid 
and immutable ; which time could not crumble, nor persecutions 
shake, nor revolutions change ; which has stood amongst us, like 
some stupendous and majestic Appenine, the earth rocking at 
its feet, and the heavens roaring round its head, firmly balanced 
on the base of its eternity ; the relic of what was ; the solemn 
and sublime memento of what must be ! 

Is this my opinion as a professed member of the church of Eng- 
land ? Undoubtedly it is. As an Irishman, I feel my liberties 
interwoven, and the best aflfections of my heart as it were e?ifibrcd 
with those of my Catholic countrymen ; and as a Protestant, 
convinced of the purity of my own faith, would I not debase it by 
postponing the powers of reason to the suspicious instrumentality 
of this world's conversion ? No ; surrendering as I do, with a 
proud contempt, all the degrading advantages with which an ec- 
clesiastical usurpation would invest m.e ; so I will not interfere 
with a blasphemous intrusion between any man and his Maker. 
I hold it a criminal and accursed sacrilege, to rob even a beggar 
of a single motive for his devotion : and I hold it an equal insult 
to my own faith, to offer me any boon for its profession. This 
pretended emancipation-bill passing into a law, would, in my 
mind, strike not a blow at this sect or that sect, but at the very 
vitality of Christianity itself. I am thoroughly convinced that 
the antichristian connection between church and state, which it 
was suited to increase, has done more mischief to the Gospel 
interest, than all the ravings of infidelity since the crucifixion. 
The sublime Creator of our blessed creed never meant it to be 
the channel of a courtly influence, or the source of a corrupt 
ascendancy. He sent it amongst us to heal, not to irritate ; to 
associate, not to seclude ; to collect together, like the baptismal 
dove, every creed and clime and colour in the universe, beneath 
the spotless wing of its protection. The union of church and 



SPEECH AT SLIGO. 13 

and state only converts good Chi-istians into bad statesmen, and 
political knaves into pretended Christians. It is at best but a 
foul and adulterous connection, polluting the purity of heaven 
with the abomination of earth, and hanging the tatters of h po- 
litical piety upon the cross of an insulted Saviour. Religion, 
Holy Religion, ought not, in the words of its Founder, to be " led 
into temptation." The hand that holds her chalice should be 
pure, and the priests of her temple should be spotless as the vest- 
ments of their ministry. Rank only degrades, wealth only im- 
poverishes, ornaments but disfigure her. I would have her pure, 
unpensioned, unstipendary ; she should rob the earth of nothing 
but its sorrows : a divine arch of promise, her extremities should 
rest on the horizon, and her span embrace the universe ; but her 
only sustenance should be the tears that were exhaled and em- 
bellished by the sun-beam. Such is my idea of what religion 
ought to be. What would this bill make it? A mendicant of 
the Castle, a menial at the levee, its manual the red book, its 
liturgy the pension list, its gospel the will of the minister ! 
Methinks I see the stalled and fatted victim of its creation, cring- 
ing with a brute suppliancy through the venal mob of ministerial 
flatterers, crouching to the ephemeral idol of the day ; and, like 
the devoted sacrifice of ancient heathenism, glorying in the gar- 
land that only decorates him for death ! I will read to you the 
opinions of a celebrated Irishman, on the suggestion in his day, 
of a bill similar to that now proposed for our oppression. He was 
a man who added to the pride not merely of his country, but of 
his species — a man who robed the very soul of inspiration in the 
splendours of a pure and overpowering eloquence. I allude to 
Mr. Burke — an authority at least to which the sticklei-s for 
establishments can offer no objection. " Before I had written 
thus far," says he, in his letter on the penal laws, " I heard of a 
scheme for giving the Castle the patronage of the presiding 
members of the Catholic clergy. At first I could scarcely credit 
it ; for I believe it is the first time that the presentation to other 
people's alms has been desired in any country. Never were the 
members of one religious sect fit to appoint the pastors to another. 
It is a great deal to suppose that the present Castle would nomi- 
nate bishops for the Roman church in Ireland, with a religious re- 
gard for its welfare. Perhaps they cannot, perhaps they dare not 
do it. But suppose them to be as well inclined, as I know that I 



14 J SPEECH AT RLTGO. 

am, to do the Catholics all kinds of jiislire, I declare I would not, 
if it were in my power, take that patronage on myself. I know 
I ought not to do it. I hclong to another community ; and it 
would he an intolcrahle usurpation in me, where I conferred no 
henctit, or even if I did confer temporal advantages. How can 
the Lord Lieutenant form the least judgment on their merits, so 
as to decide which of the popish priests is fit to he a hishop 1 It 
cannot he. The idea is ridiculous. He will hand them over to 
Lords-Lieutenant of counties, justices of the peace, and others, 
who, for the purpose of vexing and turning into derision this 
miserable people, will pick out the worst and most obnoxious they 
can find amongst the clergy to govern the rest. Whoever is com- 
plained against by his brother, will be considered as persecuted ; 
whoever is censured by his superior, will be looked upon as op- 
pressed ; whoever is careless in his opinions, loose in his morals, 
will be called a liberal man, and will be supposed to have incurred 
hatred because he was not a bigot. Liformers, tale-bearers, per- 
verse and obstinate men, flatterers, who turn their back upon 
their flock, and court the Protestant gentlemen of their country, 
will be the objects of preferment ; and then I run no risk in fore- 
telling, that whatever order, quiet, and morality you have in the 
country, will be lost." Now, let me ask you, is it to such characters 
as those described by Burke, that you would delegate the in- 
fluence imputed to your priesthood 1 Believe me, you would 
soon see them transferring their devotion from the Cross to the 
Castle ; wearing their sacred vestments but as a masquerade ap- 
pendage, and, under the degraded passport of the Almighty's name, 
sharing the pleasures of the court, and the spoils of the people. 
When I say this I am bound to add, and I do so from many proud 
and pleasing recollections, that I think the impression on the 
Catholic clergy of the present day would be late, and would be 
delible. But it is human nature. Rare are the instances in which 
a contact with the court has not been the beginning of corruption. 
The man of God is peculiarly disconnected with it. It directly 
violates his special mandate, who took his birth from the manger, 
and his disciples from the fishing-boat. Judas was the first who re- 
ceived the money of power, and it ended in the disgrace of his 
creed and the death of his master. If I was a Catholic, I would 
peculiarly deprecate any interference with my priesthood. Indeed, 
1 do not think, in any one respect in which we should wish to 



SPEECH AT SLIGO. 15 

view the delegates of the Almighty, that, making fair allowances 
for human infirmity, they could be amended. The catholic 
clergy of Ireland are rare examples of the doctrines they incul- 
cate. Pious in their habits, almost primitive in their manners, 
they have no care but their flock — no study but their Gospel. 
It is not in the gaudy ring of courtly dissipation that you M'ill 
find the Morrays, the Corpingers, and the Moylamjs of the pre- 
sent day — not at the levee, or the lounge, or the election-riot. 
No ; you will find them wherever good is to be done, or evil to be 
corrected — rearing their mitres in the van of misery, consoling 
the captive, reforming the convict, enriching the orphan ; orna- 
ments of this world, and emblems of a better : preaching their 
God through the practice of every virtue ; monitors at the con- 
fessional, apostles in the pulpit, saints at the death-bed, holding 
the sacred water to the lip of sin, or pouring the redeeming unc- 
tion on the agonies of despair. Oh, I would hold him little better 
than the Promethean robber, who would turn the fire of their 
eternal altar into the impure and perishable mass of this world's 
preferment. Better by far that the days of ancient barbarism 
should revive — better that your religion should again take refuge 
among the fastnesses of the mountain, and the solitude of the 
cavern — better that the rack of a murderous bigotry should ag.ain 
terminate the miseries of your priesthood, and that the gate of 
freedom should be only open to them through the gate of martyr- 
dom, than they should gild their missals with the wages of a court, 
and expect their ecclesiastical promotion, not from their superior 
piety, but their comparative prostitution. But why this interfer- 
ence with your principles of conscience ? Why is it that they 
will not erect your liberties save on the ruin of your temples ? 
Why is it that in the day of peace they demand securities from 
a people who in the day of danger constituted their strength ? 
When were they denied every security that was reasonable t 
Was it in 1776, when a cloud of enemies, hovering on our coast, 
saw every heart a shield, and every hill a fortress ? Did they 
want securities in Catholic Spain ? Were they denied securities 
in Catholic Portugal 1 What is their security to-day in Catholic 
Canada ? Return — return to us our own glorious Welliivgtoiv, 
and tell incredulous England what was her security amid the lines 
of Torres Vedras, or on the summit of Barrossa ! Rise, libelled 
martyrs of the Peninsula ! — rise from your " gory bed," and give 



16 SPEECH AT SLIGO. 

security for your childless parents ! No, there is not a Catholic 
family in Ireland, that for the glory of great Britain is not weep- 
ing over a child's, a brother's, or a parent's grave, and yet still 
she clamours for securities ! Oh, Prejudice ! where is thy reason ! 
Oh, Bigotry ! where is thy blush ! If ever there was an opportu- 
nity for England to combine gratitude with justice, and dignity 
with safety, it is the present. Now, when Irish blood has crim- 
soned the cross upon her naval flag, and an Irish hero strikes 
the harp to victory upon the summit of the Pyrenees. England — 
England ! do not hesitate. This hour of triumph may be but 
the hour of trial ; another season may see the splendid panorama 
of European vassalage, arrayed by your ruthless enemy, and glit- 
tering beneath the ruins of another capitol — perhaps of London. 
Who can say it ? A few months since, Moscow stood as splendid, 
as secure. Fair rose the morn on the patriarchal city — the em • 
press of her nation, the queen of commerce, the sanctuary of 
strangers ; her thousand spires pierced the very heavens, and her 
domes of gold reflected back the sun-beams. The spoiler came ; 
he marked her for his victim; and, as if his very glance was des- 
tiny, even before the night-fall, with all her pomp, and wealth, 
and happiness, she withered from the world ! A heap of ashes 
told where once stood Moscow ! Merciful God, if this lord of de- 
solation, heading his locust legions, were to invade our country ; 
though I do not ask what would be your determination ; though, 
in the language of our young enthusiast, I am sure you would 
oppose him with " a sword in one hand, and a torch in the other ;" 
still I do ask with fearlessness, upon what single principle of po- 
licy or of justice, could the advocates for your exclusion solicit 
your assistance — could they expect you to support a constitution 
from whose benefits you were debarred ? With what front could 
they ask you to recover an ascendency, which, in point of fact, 
was but re-establishing your bondage ? 

It has been said that there is a faction in Ireland ready to 
join this despot — " a French party," as Mr. Grattan thought it 
decent, even in the very senate house, to promulgate. Sir, I 
speak the universal voice of Ireland when I say, she spurns the 
imputation. There is no " French party," here, but there is — 
and it would be strange if there was not — there is an Irish 
party — men who cannot bear to see their country taunted with 
the mockery of a constitution — men who will be content with no 



SPEECH AT SLIGO. 17 

connection that refuses tliem a community of benefits while it 
imposes a community of privations — men who, sooner than see 
this land polluted by the footsteps of a slave, would wish the 
ocean-wave became its sepulchre, and that the orb of heaven 
forgot where it existed. It has been said too, (and when we were 
to be calumniated, what has not been said ?) that Irishmen are 
neither fit for freedom or grateful for favours. In the first place, 
I deny that to be a favour which is a right ; and in the next place, 
I utterly deny that a system of conciliation has ever been adopted 
with respect to Ireland. Try them, and, my life on it, they will 
be found grateful. I think I know my countrymen ; they cannot 
help being grateful for a benefit ; and there is no country on the 
earth where one would be conferred with more characteristic 
benevolence. They are, emphatically, the school-boys of the 
heart — a people of sympathy; their acts spring instinctively 
from their passions ; by nature ardent, by instinct l)rave, by in- 
heritance generous. The children of impulse, they cannot avoid 
their virtues ; and to be other than noble, they must not only be 
imnatural but unnational. Put my panegyric to the test. Enter 
the hovel of the Irish peasant. I do not say you will find the 
frugality of the Scotch, the comfort of the- English, or the fan- 
tastic decorations of the French cottager ; but I do say, within 
those wretched bazaars of mud and misery, you will find sensibi- 
lity the most affecting, politeness the most natural, hospitality the 
most grateful, merit the most unconscious ; their look is eloquence, 
their smile is love, their retort is wit, their remark is wisdom — 
not a wisdom borrowed from the dead, but that with which 
nature herself has inspired them ; an acute observance of the 
passing scene, and a deep insight into the motives of its agent. 
Try to deceive them, and see with what shrewdness they will de- 
tect ; try to outwit them, and see with what humour they will 
elude ; attack them with argument, and you will stand amazed 
at the strength of their expression, the rapidity of their ideas, 
and the energy of their gesture. In short, God seems to have 
formed our country like our people ; he has thrown round the 
one its wild, magnificent, decorated rudeness ; he has infused into 
the other the simplicity of genius and the seeds of virtue : he 
says audibly to us, " Give them cultivation." 

This is the way. Gentlemen, in which I have always looked 
upon your question — not as a party, or a sectarian, or a Catholic. 
C 



18 SPEECH AT SLIGO. 

but as an Irish question. Is it possible that any man can seriously 
believe the paralyzing five millions of such a people as I have 
been describing, can be a benefit to the empire ! Is there any 
man who deserves the name not of a statesman but of a rational 
being, who can think it politic to rob such a multitude of all 
the energies of an honourable ambition ! Look to Protestant 
Ireland, shooting over the empire those rays of genius, and those 
diunderbolts of war, that have at once embellished and preserved 
it. I speak not of a former era. I refer not for my example to 
the day just passed, when our Burks, our Barrys, and our Gold- 
smiths, exiled by this system from their native shore, wreathed 
the " immortal shamrock" round the brow of painting, poetry, 
and eloquence ! But now, even while I speak, who leads the Bri- 
tish senate ? A Protestant Irishman ! Who guides the British arms 1 
A Protestant Irishman ! And wh}^ why is Catholic Ireland, with 
her quintuple population, stationary and silent? Have physical 
causes neutralized its energies ? Has the religion of Christ stupe- 
fied its intellect ? Has the God of mankind become the partizan 
of a monopoly, and put an interdict on its advancement ? Stranger, 
do not ask the bigotted and pampered renegade who has an in- 
terest in deceiving you; but open the penal statutes, and weep 
tears of blood over the reason. Come — come yourself, and see 
this unhappy people ; see the Irishman, the only alien in Ireland, 
in rags and wretchedness, staining the sweetest scenery ever eye 
reposed on, persecuted by the extorting middleman of some ab- 
sentee landlord, plundered by the lay-proctor of some rapacious 
and unsympathizing incumbent, bearing through life but insults 
and injustice, and bereaved even of any hope in death by the 
heart-rending reflection that he leaves his children to bear, like 
their father, an abominable bondage ? Is it the fact ? Let any 
who doubts it walk out into your streets, and see the consequen- 
ces of such a system ; see it rearing up crowds in a kind of ap- 
prenticeship to the prison, absolutely permitted by their parents, 
from utter despair, to lisp the alphabet and learn the rudiments 
of profligacy? For my part, never did I meet one of these 
youthful assemblages without feeling within me a melancholy 
emotion. How often have I thought, within that little circle of 
neglected triflers who seem to have been born in caprice and 
bred in orphanage, there may exist some mind formed of the 
finest mould, and wrought for immortaUty ; a soul sweUing with 



SPEECH AT SLTGO. 19 

the energies and stamped with the patent of the Deity, which, 
under proper culture might perhaps bless, adorn, immortalize, 
or ennoble empires; some Cincinnatus, in whose breast the des- 
tinies of a nation may lie dormant ; some Miltojv, " pregnant 
with celestial fire ;" some Curran, who, when thrones were crum- 
bled and dynasties forgotten, might stand the landmark of his 
country's genius, rearing himself amid regal ruins and national 
dissolution, a mental pyramid in the solitude of time, beneath 
whose shade things might moulder, and round whose summit 
eternity must play. Even in such a circle the young Demos- 
thenes might have once been found, and Homer, the disgrace 
and glory of his age, have sung neglected ! Have not other nations 
witnessed those things, and who shall say that nature has pecu- 
liarly degraded the intellect of Ireland 1 Oh, my countrymen, let 
us hope that under better auspices and a sounder policy, the ig- 
norance that thinks so may meet its refutation. Let us turn 
from the blight and ruin of this wintry day to the fond anticipa- 
tion of a happier period, when our prostrate land shall stand 
erect among the nations, fearless and unfettered ; her brow bloom- 
ing with the wreath of science, and her path strewed with the 
oflTerings of art ; the breath of heaven blessing her flag, the ex- 
tremities of earth acknowledging her name, her fields waving 
with the fruits of agriculture, her ports alive with the contribu- 
tions of commerce, and her temples vocal with unrestricted piety. 
Such is the ambition of the true patriot ; such are the views for 
which we are calumniated ! Oh, divine ambition ! Oh, delightful 
calumny ! Happy he who shall see thee accomplished ! Happy he 
who through every peril toils for thy attainment ! Proceed, friend 
of Ireland and partaker of her wrongs, proceed undaunted to 
this glorious consummation. Fortune will not gild, power will 
not ennoble thee : but thou shalt be rich in the love and titled 
by the blessings of thy country ; thy path shall be illumined by 
the public eye, thy labours enlightened by the public gratitude ; 
and oh, remember — amid the impediments with which corrup- 
tion will oppose, and the dejection with which disappointments 
may depress you — remember you are acquiring a name to be 
cherished by the future generations of earth, long after it has 
been enrolled amongst the inheritors of heaven. 



A SPEECH 



DELIVERED AT AN AGGREGATE MEETING OF THE ROMAN 
CATHOLICS OF CORK. 



It is with no small degree of self-congratulation that I at length 
find myself in a province which every glance of the eye, and 
every throb of the heart, tells me is truly Irish ; and that con- 
gratulation is not a little enhanced by finding that you receive 
me not quite as a stranger. Indeed, if to respect the Christian 
without regard to his creed, if to love the country but the more 
for its calamities, if to hate oppression though it be robed in 
power, if to venerate integrity though it pine under persecution, 
gives a man any claim to your recognition, then, indeed, I am 
not a stranger amongst you. There is a bond of union between 
brethren, however distant; there is a sympathy between the 
virtuous, however separated ; there is a heaven-born instinct by 
which the associates of the heart become at once acquainted, 
and kindred natures, as it were by magic, see in the face of a 
stranger, the features of a friend. Thus it is, that, though we 
never met, you hail in me the sweet association, and I feel my- 
self amongst you even as if I were in the home of my nativity. 
But this my knowledge of you was not left to chance ; nor was 
it left to the records of your charity, the memorials of your pa- 
triotism, your municipal magnificence, or your commercial splen- 
dour ; it came to me hallowed by the accents of that tongue on 
which Ireland has so often hung with ecstacy, heightened by the 
eloquence and endeared by the sincerity of, I hope, our mutual 
friend. Let me congratulate him on having become in some de- 
gree naturalized in a province, where the spirit of the elder day 
seems to have lingered; and let me congratulate you on the ac- 
quisition of a man who is at once the zealous advocate of your 
cause, and a practical instance of the injustice of your oppres- 
sions. Surely, surely if merit had fair play, if splendid talents, 
if indefatigable industry, if great research, if unsullied principle, 

20 



SPEECH AT CORK. 21 

if a heart full of tlic finest affections, if a mind matured in every 
manly accomplishment, in short, if every noble, public quality, 
mellowed and reflected in the pure mirror of domestic virtue, 
could entitle a subject to distinction in a state, Mr. O'Connel should 
be distinguished ; but, it is his crime to be a Catholic, and his 
curse to be an Irishman. Simpleton ! he prefers his conscience to a 
place, and the love of his country to a participation in her plun- 
der ! Indeed he will never rise. If he joined the bigots of my 
sect, he might be a sergeant; if he joined the infidels of your sect, 
he might enjoy a pension, and there is no knowing whether some 
Orange-corporator, at an Orange-anniversary, might not modestly 
yield him the precedence of giving " the glorious and immortal 
memory." Oh, yes ; he might be privileged to get drunk in 
gratitude to the man who colonized ignorance in his native land, 
and left to his creed the legacy of legalized persecution. Nor 
would he stand alone, no matter what might be the measure of 
his disgrace, or the degree of his dereliction. You will know 
there are many of your own community who would leave him 
at the distance-post. In contemplating their recreancy, I should 
be almost tempted to smile at the exhibition of their pretensions, 
if there was not a kind of moral melancholy intermingled, that 
changed satire into pity, and ridicule into contempt. For my 
part, I behold them in the apathy of their servitude, as I would 
some miserable maniac in the contentment of his captivity. Poor 
creature ! when all that raised him from the brute is levelled, and 
his glorious intellect is mouldering in ruins, you may see him 
with his song of triumph, and his crown of straw, a fancied free- 
man amid the clanking of his chains, and an imaginary monarch 
beneath the inflictions of his keeper ! Merciful God ! is it not 
almost an argument for the sceptic and the disbeliever, when we 
see the human shape almost without an aspiration of the human 
soul, separated by no boundary from the beasts that perish — be- 
holding with indifference the captivity of their country, the per- 
secution of their creed, and the helpless, hopeless destiny of their 
children ? But they have nor creed nor consciences, nor country ; 
their god is gold, their gospel is a contract, their church a coun- 
ting-house, their characters a commodity ; they never pray but 
for the opportunities of corruption, and hold their consciences, as 
they do their government-debentures, at a price proportioned to 
the misfortunes of their country. But let us turn from these men- 



22 SPEECH AT CORK. 

dicanls of disgrace : though Ireland is doomed to the stain of 
their birth, her mind need not be sullied by their contemplation. I 
turn from them with pleasure to the contemplation of your cause, 
which, as far argument can affect it, stands on a sublime and 
splendid elevation. Every obstacle has vanished into air ; every 
favourable circumstance has hardened into adamant. The Pope, 
whom childhood was taught to lisp as the enemy of religion, and 
age shuddered at as a prescriptive calamity, has by his example 
put the princes of Christendom to shame. This day of miracles, 
in which the human heart has been strung to its extremest point 
of energy ; this day, to which posterity will look for instances of 
every crime and every virtue, holds not in its page of wonders a 
more sublime phenomenon, than that calumniated pontiff. Placed 
at the very pinnacle of human elevation, surrounded by the pomp 
of the Vatican and the splendours of the court, pouringthe man- 
dates of Christ from the throne of the CjESArs, nations were his 
subjects, kings were his companions, religion was his handmaid ; 
he went forth gorgeous with the accumulated dignity of ages, 
every knee bending, and every eye blessing the prince of one 
world, and the prophet of another. Have we not seen him in 
one moment, his crown crumbled, his sceptre a reed, his throne 
a shadow, his home a dungeon ! But if we have. Catholics, it was 
only to show how inestimable is human virtue compared with 
human grandeur; it was only to show those whose faith was 
failing, and whose fears were strengthening, that the simplicity 
of the patriarchs, the piety of the saints, and the patience of the 
martyrs, had not wholly vanished. Perhaps it was also ordained 
to show the bigot at home, as well as the tyrant abroad, that 
though the person might be chained, and the motive calumniated, 
religion was still strong enough to support her sons, and to con- 
found, if she could not reclaim, her enemies. No threats could 
awe, no promises could tempt, no sufferings could appal him ; mid 
the damps of his dungeon he dashed away the cup in which the 
pearl of his liberty was to be dissolved. Only reflect on the state of 
the world at that moment ? All around him was convulsed, the 
very foundations of the earth seemed giving way, the comet was 
let loose that, " from its fiery hair shook pestilence and death," 
the twilight was gathering,. the tempest was roaring, the darkness 
was at hand; but he towered sublime, like the last mountain in the 
deluge — majestic, not less in his elevation than in his solitude, im- 



SPEECH AT CORK. 23 

mutable amid change, magnificent amid ruin, the last remnant of 
earth's beauty, the last resting-place of heaven's light ! Thus have 
the terrors of the Vatican retreated ; thus has that cloud which 
hovered o'er your cause, brightened at once into a sign of your 
faith, and an assurance of your victory. — Another obstacle, the 
omnipotence of France ; I know it was a pretence, but it was 
made an obstacle. What has become of it 1 The spell of her 
invincibility destroyed, the spirit of her armies broken, her im- 
mense boundary dismembered, and the lord of her empire become 
the exile of a rock. She allows fancy no fear, and bigotry no 
speciousness ; and, as if in the very operation of the change to 
point the purpose of your redemption, the hand that replanted 
the rejected lily was that of an Irish Catholic. Perhaps it is not 
also unworthy of remark, that the last day of her triumph, and the 
first of her decline, was that on which her insatiable chieftain 
smote the holy head of your religion. You will hardly suspect 
I am imbued with the follies of superstition ; but when the man 
now unborn shall trace the story of that eventful day, he will sec 
tlie adopted child of fortune, borne on the wings of victory from 
clime to clime, marking every movement with a triumph, and 
every pause with a crown, till time, space, and seasons, nay, even 
nature herself, seeming to vanish from before him — in the blas- 
phemy of his ambition he smote the apostle of his God, and dared 
to raise the everlasting Cross amid his perishable trophies ! I am 
no fanatic : but is it not remarkable ? May it not be one of those 
signs which the Deity has sometimes given, in compassion to our 
infirmity 1 signs, which, in the punishment of one nation, not unfre- 
qucntly denote the warning to another ; — 

"Signs sent by God to mark the will of Heaven : 
Signs, which bid nations weep and be forgiven." 

The argument, however, is taken from the bigot ; and those 
whose consciousness taught them to expect what your loyalty 
should have taught them to repel, can no longer oppose you from 
the terrors of invasion. Thus, then, the papal phantom and the 
French threat have vanished into nothing. — Another obstacle, 
the tenets of your creed. Has England still to learn them 1 I 
will tell her where. Let her ask Canada, the last plank of her 
American shipwreck. Let her ask Portugal, the first omen of 
lier European splendour. Let her ask Spain, the most Catholic 
country in the universe, her Catholic friends, her Catholic allies, 



24 SPEECH AT CORK. 

her rivals in the triumph, her rehance in the retreat, her last stay 
when the world had deserted her. They must have told her on 
the field of blood, whether it was true that they " kept no faith 
zvith heretics.'^ Alas, alas! how miserable a thing is bigotry, when 
every friend puts it to the blush, and every triumph but rebukes 
its weakness. If England continued still to accredit this calum- 
ny, I would direct her for conviction to the hero, for whose gift 
alone she owes us an eternity of gratitude; whom we have seen 
leading the van of universal emancipation, decking his wreath 
with the flowers of every soil, and filling his army with the 
soldiers of every sect ; before whose splendid dawn, every tear 
exhaling, and every vapour vanishing, the colours of the Eu- 
ropean world have revived, and the spirit of European liberty 
(may no crime avert the omen !) seems to have arisen ! Sup- 
pose he was a Catholic, could this have been ? Suppose Catho- 
lics did not follow him, could this have been ? Did the Catholic 
Cortes inquire his faith when they gave him the supreme com- 
mand 1 Did the Regent of Portugal withhold from his creed the 
reward of his valour 1 Did the Catholic soldier pause at Sala- 
manca to dispute upon polemics? Did the Catholic chieftain 
prove upon Barrossa that he kept no faith with heretics 1 or did 
the creed of Spain, the same with that of France, the opposite 
of that of England, prevent their association in the field of liber- 
ty ? Oh, no, no, no ! the citizen of every clime, the friend of every 
colour, and the child of every creed, liberty walks abroad in the 
ubiquity of her benevolence : alike to her the varieties of faith 
and the vicissitudes of country ; she has no object but the hap- 
piness of man, no bounds but the extremities of creation. Yes, 
yes, it was reserved for Wellington to redeem his own country 
when he was regenerating every other. It was reserved for him 
to show how vile were the aspersions on your creed, how gener- 
ous were the glowings of your gratitude. He was a Protestant, 
yet Catholics trusted him ; he was a Protestant, yet Catholics ad- 
vanced him ? He is a Protestant Knight in Catholic Portugal ; he 
is a Protestant Duke in Catholic Spain ; he is a Protestant com- 
mander of Catholic armies : he is more ; he is the living proof of 
the Catholic's liberality, and the undeniable refutation of the 
Protestant's injustice. Gentlemen, as a Protestant, though I may 
blush for the bigotry of many of my creed who continue obsti- 
nate, in the teeth of this conviction, still, were I a Catholic, I 



SPEECH AT CORK. 25 

should feel little triumph in the victory. I should only hang my 
head at the distresses which this warfare occasioned to my coun- 
try. I should only think how long she had withered in the agony 
of her disunion ; how long she had bent, fettered by slaves, cajoled 
by blockheads, and plundered by adventurers ; the proverb of 
the fool, the prey of the politician, the dupe of the designing, the 
experiment of the desperate ; struggling as it were between her 
own fanatical and infatuated parties, those hell-engendered ser- 
pents which enfold her, like the Trojan seer, even at the wor- 
ship of her altars, and crush her to death in the very embraces 
of her children ! It is time (is it not ?) that she should be extri- 
cated. The act would be proud, the means would be Christian ; 
mutual forbearance, mutual indulgence, mutual concession: I 
would say to the Protestant, ' Concede ;' I would say to the Ca- 
tholic, ' Forgive ;' I would say to both, ' Though you bend not at 
the same shrine, you have a common God, and a common coun- 
try ; the one has commanded love, the other kneels to you for 
peace.' This hostility of her sects has been the disgrace, the pe- 
culiar disgrace of Christianity. The Gentoo loves his cast ; so 
does the Mahometan ; so does the Hindoo, whom England, out of 
the abundance of her charity, is about lo teach her creed ; — I 
hope she may not teach her practice. But Christianity — Chris- 
tianity alone, exhibits her thousand sects, each denouncing his 
neighbour here, in the name of God ; and damning hereafter, out 
of pure devotion ! "You're a heretic," says the Catholic : "You're 
a Papist," says the Protestant. " I appeal to Saint Peter," ex- 
claims the Catholic : " 1 appeal to Saint Athanasius," cries the 
Protestant : " and if it goes to damning, he's as good at it as any 
saint in the calendar." " You'll all be damned eternally," moans 
out the Methodist ; " Pm the elect !" Thus it is, you see, each 
has his anathema, his accusation, and his retort ; and in the end 
Religion is the victim ! The victory of each is the overthrow of 
all ; and Infidelity, laughing at the contest, writes the refutation 
of their creed in the blood of the combatants ! I wonder if this 
reflection has ever struck any of those reverend dignitaries who 
rear their mitres against CathoHc emancipation. Has it ever 
glanced across their Christian zeal, if the story of our country 
should have casually reached the valleys of Hindostan, with what 
an argument they are furnishing the heathen world against their 
sacred missionary ? In what terms could the Christian ecclesiastic 



26 SPEECH AT CORK. 

answer the Eastern Bramin, when he replied to his exhorta- 
tions in language such as this ? " Father, we have heard your 
doctrine ; it is splendid in theoiy, specious in promise, sublime 
in prospect ; like the world to which it leads, it is rich in the mi- 
racles of light. But, Father, we have heard that there are times 
when its rays vanish and leave your sphere in darkness, or when 
your only lustre arises from meteors of lire, and moons of blood ; 
we have heard of the verdant island which the Great Spirit has 
raised in the bosom of the v^^aters with such a bloom of beauty, 
that the very wave she has usurped, worships the loveliness of 
her intrusion. The sovereign of our forests is not more generous 
in his anger than her sons ; the snow-flake, ere it falls on the 
mountain, is not purer than her daughters ; little inland seas re- 
flect the splendours of her landscape, and her valleys smile at the 
story of the serpent ! Father, is it true, that this isle of the sun, 
this people of the morning, find the fury of the ocean in your 
creed, and more than the venom of tlie viper in your policy 1 Is 
it true, that for six hundred years her peasant has not tasted 
peace, nor her piety rested from persecution 1 Oh, Brama ! de- 
fend us from the God of the Christian ! Father, father, return to 
your brethren, retrace the waters ; we may live in ignorance, 
but we live in love ; and w-e will not taste the tree that gives us 
evil when it gives us wisdom. The heart is our guide, nature is 
our gospel ; in the imitation of our fathers we found our hope ; 
and, if we err, on the virtue of our motives we rely for our re- 
demption." How would the missionaries of the mitre answer him? 
How will they answer that insulted Being of whose creed their 
conduct carries the refutation ? 

But to what end do I argue with the Bigot ? — a wretch, whom 
no philosophy can humanize, no charity soften, no religion reclaim, 
no miracle convert : a monster, who, red with the fires of hell, 
and bending under the crimes of earth, erects his murderous di- 
vinity upon a throne of sculls, and would gladly feed, even with 
a brother's blood, the cannibal appetite of his rejected altax- ! 
His very interest cannot soften him into humanity. Surely if it 
could, no man would be found mad enough to advocate a system 
which cankers the very heart of society, and undermines the na- 
tural resources of government ; which takes away the strongest 
excitement to industry, by closing up every avenue to laudable 
ambition ; which administers to the vanity or the vice of a party, 



SPEECH AT CORK. 27 

when it should only study the advantage of a people; and holds 
out the perquisites of state as an impious bounty on the persecu- 
tion of religion. — I have already shown that the power of the 
Pope, that the power of France, and that the tenets of your 
creed, were but imaginary auxiliaries to this system. Another 
pretended obstacle has, however, been opposed to your emanci- 
pation. I allude to the danger arising from a foreign influence. 
What a triumphant answer can you give to that ! Methinks, as 
lately,Isee the assemblage of your hallowed hierarchy, surrounded 
by the priesthood, and followed by the people, waving aloft the 
crucifix of Christ alike against the seductions of the court, and 
the commands of the conclave ! Was it not a delightful, a heart- 
cheering spectacle, to see that holy band of brothers preferring 
the chance of martyrdom to the certainty of promotion, and 
postponing all the gratifications of worldly pride, to the severe 
but heaven-gaining glories of their poverty ? They acted honestly, 
and they acted wisely also ; for I say here, before the largest 
assembly I ever saw in any country — and I believe you are al- 
most all Catholics — I say here, that if the see of Rome presumed 
to impose any temporal mandate directly or indirectly on the 
Irish people, the Irish bishops should at once abandon it; or the 
flocks, one and all, would abjure and banish them both together. 
History affords us too fatal an example of the perfidious, arrogant, 
and venal interference of a papal usurper of former days, in the 
temporal jurisdiction of this country ; an interference assumed 
without right, exercised without principle, and followed by ca- 
lamities apparently without end. Thus, then, has every obstacle 
vanished : but it has done more — every obstacle has, as it were, 
by miracle, produced a powerful argument in your favour. How 
do I prove it ? Follow me in my proofs, and you will see by what 
links the chain is united. The power of Napoleon was the grand 
and leading obstacle to your emancipation. That power led him 
to the menace of an Irish invasion. What did that prove ? Only 
the sincerity of Irish allegiance. On the very threat, we poured 
forth our volunteers, our yeomen, and our militia ; and the coun- 
try became encircled with an armed and a loyal population. 
Thus then the calumny of your disaffection vanished. — That 
power next led him to the invasion of Portugal. What did it 
prove 1 Only the good faith of Catholic allegiance. Every field 
in the Peninsula saw the Catholic Portuguese hail the English 



28 SPEECH AT CORK. 

Protestant as a brollicr and a friend, joined in the same pride and 
the same peril. Tlius, then, vanished the slander, that you could 
not keep faith with heretics. — That power next led him to the 
imprisonment of the PontilF, so long suspected of being quite 
ready to sacrifice every thing to his interest and his dominion. 
What did that prove ? The strength of his principles, the purity 
of his faith, the disinterestedness of his practice. It proved a 
life spent in the study of the saints, and ready to be closed by an 
imitation of the martyrs. Thus, also, was the head of your reli- 
gion vindicated to Europe. — There remained behind but one im- 
pediment — your liability to a foreign influence. Now mark ! 
The Pontiff's captivity led to the transmission of Quarantotti's 
rescript ; and, on its arrival, from the priest to the peasant, there 
was not a Catholic in the land, who did not spurn the document 
of Italian audacity ! Thus, then, vanished also the phantom of a 
foreign influence ! Is this conviction 1 Is not the hand of God 
in it? Oh yes ! for observe what followed. The very moment 
that power, which was the first and last leading argument against 
you, had, by its special operation, banished every obstacle ; that 
power itself, as it were by enchantment, evaporated at once ; 
and peace with Europe took away the last pretence for your ex- 
clusion. Peace with Europe ! alas, alas, there is no peace for 
Ireland : the universal pacification was but the signal for renewed 
hostility to us ; and the mockery of its preliminaries w^ere tolled 
through our provinces by the knell of the curfew. I ask, is it 
not time that this hostility should cease 1 If ever there was a day 
when it was necessary, that day undoubtedly exists no longer. 
The continent is triumphant, the Peninsula is free, France is our 
ally. The hapless house which gave birth to Jacobinism is extinct 
for ever. The Pope has been found not only not hostile, but 
complying. Indeed, if England would recollect the share you 
had in these sublime events, the very recollection should subsidize 
her into gratitude. But should she not — should she, with a base- 
ness monstrous and unparalleled, forget our services, she has still 
to study a tremendous lesson. The ancient order of Europe, it 
is true, is restored, but what restored it 1 Coalition after coalition 
had crumbled away before the might of the conqueror ; crowns 
were but ephemeral ; monarchs only the tenants of an hour ; the 
descendants of Frederick dwindled into a vassal ; the heir of Peter 
shrunk into the recesses of his frozen desert ; the successor of 



SPEECH AT CORK. 29 

Charles roamed a vagabond, not only thronelcss but houseless; 
every evening sun set upon a change ; every morning dawned 
upon some new convulsion : in short, the whole political globe 
quivered as with an earthquake ; and who could tell what vene- 
rable monument was next to shiver beneath the splendid, fright- 
ful, and reposeless heavings of the French volcano T What gave 
Europe peace, and England safety, amid this palsy of her Princes? 
Was it not the Landwehr and the Landstrum and the Levy en 
Masse 1 Was it not the People ? — that first and last, and best 
and noblest, as well as safest security of a virtuous government. 
It is a glorious lesson ; she ought to study it in this hour of safety ; 
but should she not — 

"Oh, wo be to the Prince who rules by fear, 
When danger comes upon him !" 

She will adopt it. I hope it from her wisdom ; I expect it from 
her policy ; I claim it from her justice ; I demand it from her 
gratitude. She must at length see that there is a gross mistake 
in the management of Ireland. No wise man ever yet imagined 
injustice to be his interest ; and the minister who thinks he serves 
a state by upholding the most irritating and the most impious of 
all monopolies, will one day or other find himself miserably mis- 
taken. This system of persecution is not the way to govern this 
country ; at least to govern it with any happiness to itself, or ad- 
vantage to its rulers. Centuries have proved its total inefficiency ; 
and if it be continued for centuries, the proofs will be but multi- 
plied. Why, however, should I blame the English people, when 
I see our own representatives so shamefully negligent of our in- 
terest ? The other day, for instance, when Mr. Peele introduced, 
aye, and passed too, his three newly invented penal bills, to the 
necessity of which, every assizes in Ireland, and as honest a judge 
as ever dignified or redeemed the ermine, has given the refuta- 
tion ; why was it that no Irish member rose in his place to vin- 
dicate his country 1 Where were the nominal representatives of 
Ireland ? Where were the renegade revilcrs of the demagogue ? 
Where were the noisy proclaimers of the board ? What, was 
there not one voice to own the country 1 Was the patriot of 1782 
an assenting auditor ? Were our hundred ili/ieranls mute and 
motionless — " quite chop-fallen ?" or is it only when Ireland is 
slandered, an^ her motives misrepresented, and her oppressions 
are basely and falsely denied, that their venal throats are ready 



no SI'EECII \T CORK . 

to echo the chorus of ministerial cahimny ? Oh, I should not have 
to ask those questions, if in the late contest for this city, you had 
prevailed, and sent Hutchinson into Parliament ; he would have 
risen, though alo7ie, as I have often seen him — richer not less in 
hereditary fame, than in personal accomplishments ; the orna- 
ment of Ireland as she is, the solitary remnant of what she was. 
If slander dare asperse her, it would not have done so with im- 
punity. He would have encouraged the timid ; he would have 
shamed the recreant ; and though he could not save us from 
chains, he would at least have shielded us from calumny. Let 
me hope that his absence shall be but of short duration, and that 
this city will earn an additional claim to the gratitude of the 
country, by electing him her representative. I scarcely know 
him but as a public man ; and considering the state to which we 
are reduced by the apostacy of some, and the ingratitude of 
others, and venality of more, — I say you should inscribe the con- 
duct of such a man in the manuals of your devotion, and in the 
primers of your children ; but above all, you should act on it your- 
selves. Let me intreat of you, above all things to sacrifice any 
personal differences among yourselves, for the great cause in 
which you are embarked. Remember the contest is for your 
children, your country, and your God ; and remember also, that 
the day of Irish union will be the natal day of Irish liberty. 
When your own Parliament (which I trust in heaven we may 
yet see again) voted you the right of franchise, and the right of 
purchase, it gave you, if you are not false to yourselves, a cer- 
tainty of your emancipation. — My friends, farewell ! This has 
been a most unexpected meeting to me ; it has been our first — 
it may be our last. I can never forget the enthusiasm of this re- 
ception. I am too much affected by it to make professions ; but, 
believe me, no matter where I may be driven by the whim of 
my destiny, you shall find me one, in whom change of place shall 
create no change of principle ; one whose memory must perish 
ere he forgets his country ; whose heart must be cold when it 
beats not for her happiness. 



A SPEECH 

DEUVERED AT A DINNER GIVEN ON DINAS ISLAND, 
IN THE LAKE OF KILLARNEY, 

ON MR. PHILLIPS' HEALTH BEmG GIVEN, TOGETHER WITH THAT 
OF MR. PAYNE, A YOUNG AMERICAN. 



It is not with the vain hope of returning by words the kind- 
nesses which have been Hterally showered on me during the 
short period of our acquaintance, that I now interrupt, for a 
moment, the flow of your festivity. Indeed, it is not necessary ; 
an Irishman needs no requital for his hospitaUty ; its generous im- 
pulse is the instinct of his nature, and the very consciousness of 
the act carries its recompense along with it. But, Sir, there are 
sensations excited by an allusion in your toast, under the influence 
of which, silence would be impossible. To be associated with 
Mr. Payne must be, to any one who regards private virtues 
and personal accomplishments, a source of peculiar pride ; and 
that feeling is not a little enhanced in me by a recollection of the 
country to which we are indebted for his qualifications. Indeed, 
the mention of America has never failed to fill me with the most 
lively emotions. In my earliest infancy, that tender season when 
impressions, at once the most permanent and the most powerful, 
are likely to be excited, the story of her then recent struggle 
raised a throb in every heart that loved liberty, and wrung a re- 
luctant tribute even from discomfited oppression. I saw her 
spurning alike the luxuries that would enervate, and the legions 
that would intimidate ; dashing from her lips the poisoned cup of 
European servitude, and, through all the vicissitudes of her pro- 
tracted conflict, displaying a magnanimity that defied misfortune, 
and a moderation that gave new grace to victory. It was the first 
vision of my childhood ; it will descend with me to the grave. But 
if as a man, I venerate the mention of America, what must be 
my feelings towards her as an Irishman. Never, oh never, while 

31 



32 SPEECH AT DINAS ISLAND. 

memory remains, can Ireland forget the home of her emigrant, 
and the asylum of her exile. No matter whether their sorrows 
sprung from the errors of enthusiasm, or the realities of suflcring 
— from fancy or infliction ; that must he reserved for the scrutiny 
of those whom the lapse of time shall acquit of partiality. It is 
for the men of other ages to investigate and record it : but surely it 
is for the men of every age to hail the hospitality that received 
the shelterless, and love the feeling that befriended the unfor- 
tunate. Search creation round, where can you find a country 
that presents so sublime a view, so interesting an anticipation ? 
What noble institutions ! What a comprehensive policy ! What 
a wise equalization of every political advantage ! The oppress- 
ed of all countries, the martyrs of every creed, the innocent 
victim of despotic arrogance or superstitious phrenzy, may there 
find refuge ; his industry encouraged, his piety respected, his am- 
bition animated ; with no restraint but those laws which are the 
same to all, and no distinction but that which his merit may 
originate. Who can deny that the existence of such a country 
presents a subject for human congratulation ! Who can deny, 
that its gigantic advancement offers a field for the most rational 
conjecture ! At the end of the very next century, if she pro- 
ceeds as she seems to promise, what a wondrous spectacle may 
she not exhibit! Who shall say for what purpose a mysterious 
Providence may not have designed her! Who shall say that 
when in its follies or its crimes, the old world may have interred 
all the pride of its power, and all the pomp of its civilization, 
human natiire may not find its destined renovation in the new ! 
For myself, I have no doubt of it. I have not the least doubt 
that when our temples and our trophies shall have mouldered into 
dust — when the glories of our name shall be but the legend of 
tradition, and the light of our achievements only live in song ; 
philosophy will rise agam in the sky of her Franklin, and glory 
rekindle at the urn of her Washington. Is this the vision of ro- 
mantic fancy ? Is it even improbable 1 Is it half so improbable 
as the events, which, for the last twenty years have rolled like 
successive tides over the surface of the European world, each 
erasing the impressions that preceded it ? Thousands upon thou- 
sands. Sir, I know there are, who will consider this supposition 
as wild and whimsical ; but they have dwelt with little reflection 
upon the records of the past. They have but ill observed the 



SPEECH AT DINAS ISLAND. 33 

never-ceasing progress of national rise and national ruin. They 
form their judgment on the deceitful stability of the present 
hour, never considering the innumerable monarchies and re- 
publics, in former days, apparently as permanent, their very 
existence become now the subjects of speculation — I had almost 
said of scepticism. I appeal to History ! Tell me, thou reverend 
chronicler of the grave, can all the illusions of ambition realized, 
can all the wealth of an universal commerce, can all the achieve- 
ments of successful heroism, or all the establishments of this 
world's wisdom, secure to empire the permanency of its posses- 
sions 1 Alas, Troy thought so once ; yet the land of Priam lives 
only in song ! Thebes thought so once, yet her hundred gates have 
crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust they were 
vainly intended to commemorate ! So thought Palmyra — where 
is she ? So thought Persepolis, and now — 

" Yon waste, where roaming lions howl, 

Yon aisle, where moans the grey-eyed owl, 

Shows the proud Persian's great abode, 

Where sceptered once, an earthly god. 

His power-clad arm controlled each happier clime, 

Where sports the warbling muse, and fancy soars sublime. " 

So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spartan, yet 
Leonidas's is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by 
the servile, mindless, and enervate Ottoman! In his hurried march. 
Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, and all its 
vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, 
erased the very impression of his footsteps ! The days of then- 
glory are as if they had never been ; and the island that was 
then a speck, rude and neglected in the barren ocean, now rivals 
the ubiquity of their commerce, the glory of their arms, the 
fame of their philosophy, the eloquence of their senate, and the 
inspiration of their bards ! Who shall say, then, contemplating 
the past, that England, proud and potent as she appears, may 
not one day be what Athens is, and the young America yet soar 
to be what Athens was ! Who shall say, when the European 
column shall have mouldered, and the night of barbarism obscured 
its very ruins, that that mighty continent may not emerge from 
the horizon, to rule, for its time, sovereign of the ascendant ! 

Such, sir, is the natural progress of human operations, and 
such the unsubstantial mockery of human pride. But I should, 
perhaps, apologize for this digression. The tombs are, at best, a 
E 



34 SPEECH AT DINAS ISLAND. 

sad although an instructive subject. At all events, they are ill 
suited to such an hour as this. I shall endeavour to atone for it, 
by turning to a theme which tombs cannot inurn, or revolution 
alter. It is the custom of your board, and a noble one it is, to 
deck the cup of the gay with the garland of the great ; and 
surely, even in the eyes of its deity, his grape is not the less lovely 
when glowing beneath the foliage of the palm-tree and the myr- 
tle. — ^Allow me to add one flower to the chaplet, which, though 
it sprang in America, is no exotic. Virtue planted it, and it is 
naturalized every where. I see you anticipate me — I see you 
concur v/ith me, that it matters very little what immediate spot 
may be the birth-place of such a man as Washington. No peo- 
ple can claim, no country can appropriate him ; the boon of 
Providence to the human race, his fame is eternity, and his resi- 
dence creation. Though it was the defeat of our arms, and the 
disgrace of our policy, I almost bless the convulsion in which he 
had his origin. If the heavens thundered and the earth rocked, 
yet, when the storm passed, how pure was the climate that it 
cleared ; how bright in the brow of the firmament was the planet 
which it revealed to us ! In the production of Washington, it 
does really appear as if nature was endeavouring to improve 
upon herself, and that all the virtues of the ancient world were 
but so many studies preparatory to the patriot of the new. In- 
dividual instances no doubt there were ; splendid exemplifications 
of some single qualification. Caesar was merciful, Scipio was 
continent, Hannibal was patient ; but it was reserved for Wash- 
ington to blend them all in one, and like the lovely chef d'ceuvre 
of the Grecian artj.st, to exhibit in one glow of associated beaut)^ 
the pride of every model, and the perfection of every master. 
As a General, he marshalled the peasant into a veteran, and sup- 
plied by discipline the absence of experience ; as a statesman, 
he enlarged the policy of the cabinet into the most comprehen- 
sive system of general advantage ; and such was the wisdom of 
his views, and the philosophy of his counsels, that to the soldier 
and the statesman he almost added the character of the sage ! 
a conqueror, he was untainted with the crime of blood ; a revo- 
lutionist, he was free from any stain of treason ; for aggression 
commenced the contest, and his country called him to the com- 
mand. — Liberty unsheathed his sword, necessity stained, victory 
eturned it. If he had paused here, history might have doubted 



SPEECH AT DTNAS ISLAND. 35 

what station to assign him, whether at the head of her citizens or 
her soldiers, her heroes or her patriots. But the last glorious act 
crowns his career, and banishes all hesitation. Who, like Washing- 
ton, after having emancipated a hemisphere, resigned its crown, 
and preferred the retirement of domestic life to the adoration of a 
land he might be almost said to have created ? 

" How sliall we rank thee upon glory's page, 
Thou more than soldier, and just less than sage ; 
All thou hast been reflects less fame on thee, 
Far less than all thou hast forborne to be !" 

Such, Sir, is the testimony of one not to be accused of par- 
tiality in his estimate of America. Happy, proud America ! the 
lightnings of heaven yielded to your philosophy ! The tempta- 
tions of earth could not seduce your patriotism ! 

I have the honour, Sir, of proposing to you as a toast, The 

IMMORTAL MEMORY OF GeORGE WASHINGTON. 



A SPEECH 



DELIVERED AT AN AGGREGATE MEETING OF THE ROMAN 
CATHOLICS OF THE COUNTY AND CITY OF DUBLIN. 



Having taken, in the discussions on your question, such hum- 
ble share as was allotted to my station and capacity, I may he 
permitted to offer my ardent congratulations at the proud pinna- 
cle on which it this day reposes. After having combated calum- 
nies the most atrocious, sophistries, the most plausible, and perils 
the most appalling, that slander could invent, or ingenuity devise, 
or power array against you, I at length behold the assembled 
rank and wealth and talent of the Catholic body offering to the 
legislature that appeal which cannot be rejected, if there be a 
Power in heaven to redress injury, or a spirit on earth to ad- 
minister justice. No matter what may be the depreciations of 
faction or of bigotry ; this earth never presented a more ennobling 
spectacle than that of a christian country suffering for her religion 
with the patience of a martyr, and suing for her liberties with 
the expostulations of a philosopher ; reclaiming the bad by her 
piety ; refuting the bigoted by her practice ; wielding the Apos- 
tle's weapons in the patriot's cause, and at length, laden with 
chains and with laurels, seeking from the country she had saved, 
the constitution she had shielded ! Little did I imagine, that in 
such a state of your cause, we should be called together to coun- 
teract the impediments to its success, created not by its enemies, 
but by those supposed to be its friends. It is a melancholy occa- 
sion ; but melancholy as it is, it must be met, and met with the 
fortitude of men struggling in the sacred cause of liberty. I do 
not allude to the proclamation of your Board ; of that Board I 
never was a member, so I can speak impartially. It contained 
much talent, some learning, many virtues. It was valuable on 
that account ; but it was doubly valuable as being a vehicle for 
the individual sentiments of any Catholic, and for the aggregate 
sentiments of every Catholic. Those who seceded from it, do not 
remember that, individually, they are nothing ; that as a body, 

36 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 37 

they are every thing. It is not this wealthy slave, or that titled 
sycophant, whom the bigots dread, or the parhament respects ! 
No, it is the body, the numbers, the rank, the property, the ge- 
nius, the perseverance, the education, but, above all, the Union 
of the Catholics. I am far from defending every measure of the 
Board — perhaps I condemn some of its measures even more than 
those who have seceded from it ; but is it a reason, if a general 
makes one mistake, that his followers are to desert him, especially 
when the contest is for all that is dear or valuable ? No doubt 
the Board had its errors. Show me the human institution which 
has not. Let the man, then, who denounces it, prove himself 
superior to humanity, before he triumphs in his accusation. I 
am sorry for its suppression. When I consider the animals who 
are in office around us, the act does not surprise me ; but I confess, 
even from them, the manner did, and the time chosen did, most 
sensibly. I did not expect it on the very hour when the news 
of universal peace was first promulgated, and on the anniversary 
of the only British monarch's birth, who ever gave a boon to 
this distracted country. 

You will excuse this digression, rendered in some degree neces- 
sary. I shall now confine myself exclusively to your resolution, 
which determines on the immediate presentation of your petition, 
and censures the neglect of any discussion on it by your advo- 
cates during the last session of Parliament. You have a right 
to demand most fully the reasons of any man who dissents from 
Mr. Grattan. I will give you mine explicitly. But I shall first 
state the reasons which he has given for the postponement of your 
question. I shall do so out of respect to him, if indeed it can be 
called respect to quote those sentiments, which on their very 
mention must excite your ridicule. Mr. Grattan presented your 
petition, and, on moving that it should lie where so many pre- 
ceding ones have lain, namely, on the table, he declared it to be 
his intention to move for no discussion. Here, in the first place, 
I think Mr. Grattan wrong ; he got that petition, if not on the 
express, at least on the implied condition of having it immedi- 
ately discussed.. There w^as not a man at the aggregate meeting 
at which it was adopted, who did not expect a discussion on the 
very first opportunity. Mr. Grattan, however, was angry at 
" suggestions." I do not think Mr. Grattan, of all men, had any 
right to be so angry at receiving that which every English mem- 



38 SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 

ber was willing to receive, and was actually receiving from any 
English corn-factor. Mr. Grattan was also angry at our " vio- 
lence." Neither do I think lie had any occasion to be so squeam- 
ish at what he calls our violence. There was a day, when Mr. 
Grattan would not have spurned our suggestions, and there was 
also a day when he was fifty-fold more intemperate than any of his 
oppressed countrymen, whom he now holds up to the English 
people as so unconstitutionally violent. A pretty way forsooth, 
for your advocate to commence concihating a foreign auditory in 
favour of your petition. Mr. Grattan, however, has fulfilled his 
own prophecy, that " an oak of the forest is too old to be trans- 
planted at fifty," and our fears that an Irish native would soon 
loose its raciness in an English atmosphere. " It is not my in- 
tention," says he, " to move for a discussion at present." Why ? 
" Great obstacles have been removed." That's his first reason. 
" I am, however," says he, " still ardent." Ardent ! Why it 
srikes me to be a very novel kind of ardour, which toils till it has 
removed every impediment, and then pauses at the prospect of 
its victory ! "And I am of opinion," he continues, " that any im- 
mediate discussion would be the height of precipitation :" that is, 
after having removed the impediments, he pauses in his path, de- 
claring he is " ardent ;" and after centuries of sufTering, when 
you press for a discussion, he protests that he considers you mon- 
strously precipitate ! Now is not that a fair translation ? Why 
really if we did not know Mr. Grattan, we should be almost 
tempted to think that he was quoting from the ministry. With 
the exception of one or two plain, downright, sturdy, unblushing 
bigots, who opposed you because you were Christians, and de- 
clared they did so, this was the cant of every man who affected 
liberality. " Oh, I declare," they say, " they may not be can- 
nibals, though they are Catholics ; and 1 would be very glad 
to vote for them, but this is no /ime." " Oh no," says Bragge 
Bathurst, " it 's no time. What ! in time of war ! Why it looks 
like bullying us !" Very well : next comes the peace, and what 
say ouv friends the opposition? " Oh ! I declare peace is no time, 
it looks so like persuading us." For my part, serious as the sub- 
ject is, it affects me with the very same ridicule with which I 
see I have so unconsciously aflfected you. I will tell you a story 
of which it reminds me. It is told of the celebrated Charles Fox. 
Far be it from me, however, to mention that name with levity. 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 39 

As he was a great man, I revere him ; as he was a good man, 1 
love him. He had as wise a head as ever paused to deliberate ; 
he had as sweet a tongue as ever gave the words of wisdom ut- 
terance ; and he had a heart so stamped with the immediate 
impress of the Divinity, that its very errors might be traced to 
the excess of its benevolence. I had almost forgot the story. 
Fox was a man of genius — of course he was poor. Poverty is 
a reproach to no man ; to such a man as Fox, I think it was a 
pride : for if he chose to traffic with his principles ; if he chose to 
gamble with his conscience, how easily might he have been rich? 
I guessed your answer. It would be hard, indeed, if you did 
not believe that in England talents might find a purchaser, who 
have seen in Ireland how easily a blockhead may swindle himself 
into preferment. Juvenal says that the greatest misfortune at- 
tendant on poverty is ridicule. Fox found out a greater — debt. 
The Jews called on him for payment. " Ah, my dear friends," 
says Fox, " I admit the principle ; I owe you money, but what 
time is this, when I am going upon biisinessJ^ Just so our friends 
admit the principle ; they owe you emancipation, but war's no 
time. Well, the Jews departed just as you did. They returned 
to the charge : " What : (cries Fox,) is this a time, when I am 
engaged on an appointment ?" What ! say our friends, is this a 
time when all the world 's at peace 1 The Jews departed ; but 
the end of it was. Fox, with his secretary, Mr. Hare, who was 
as much in debt as he was, shut themselves up in garrison. The 
Jews used to surround his habitation at day-light, and poor Fox 
regularly put his head out of the window, with this question, 
"Gentlemen,areyoui^oa:-hunting or ifere-hunting this morning?" 
His pleasantry mitigated the very Jews. " Well, well, Fox, now 
you have always admitted the principle, but protested against 
the time — we will give you your own time, only just fix some final 
day for our repayment." — " Ah, my dear Moses," replies Fox, 
" now this is friendly. I will take you at your word ; I will fix 
a day, and as it 's to be ajinal day, what would you think of the 
day o( judgment F" — " That will be too busy a day with us." — 
" Well, well, in order to accommodate all parties, let us settle the 
day after." Thus it is, between the war inexpediency of Bragge 
Bathurst, and the peace inexpediency of Mr. Grattan, you may 
expect your emancipation-bill pretty much about the time that 
Fox settled for the payment of his creditors. Mr. Grattan, how- 



40 SPEECH AT DUBLIN 

ever, tliough he scorned to take ^jmr suggestions, took the sugges- 
tions of your friends. " I have consulted," says he, " my right 
honourable friends !" Oh, all/new(/s, all right honcniraUe ! Now 
this it is to trust the interest of a people into the hands of a party. 
You must know, in parliamentary parlance, these right honour- 
able friends mean a party. There are few men so contemptible, 
as not to have a party. The minister has his party. The oppo- 
sition have their party. The saints, for there are saints in the 
House of Commons, lucus a no?i liccendo, the saints have their 
party. Every one has his party. I had forgotten — Ireland has 
710 partij. Such are the reasons, if reasons they can be called, 
which Mr. Grattan has given for the postponement of your ques- 
tion ; and I sincerely say, if they had come from any other man, 
I would not have condescended to have given them an answer. 
He is indeed reported to have said that he has others in reserve, 
which he did not think it necessary to detail. If those which he 
reserved were like those he delivered, I do not dispute the pru- 
dence of keeping them to himself; but as we have not the gift 
of prophecy, it is not easy for us to answer them, until he shall 
deign to give them to his constituents. 

Having dealt thus freely with the alleged reasons for the post- 
ponement, it is quite natural that you should require what my 
reasons are for urging the discussion. I shall give them candidly. 
They are at once so simple and explicit, it is quite impossible 
that the meanest capacity amongst you should not comprehend 
them. I would urge the instant discussion, because discussion 
has always been of use to you ; because, upon every discussion 
you have gained converts out of doors ; and because, upon 
every discussion within the doors of parliament, your enemies 
have diminished, and your friends have increased. Now, is not 
that a strong reason for continuing your discussions ? This may 
be assertion. Aye, but I will prove it. In order to convince 
you of the argument as referring to the country, I need but point 
to the state of the public mind now upon the subject, and that 
which existed in the memory of the youngest. I myself remem- 
ber the blackest and the basest universal denunciations against 
your creed, and the vilest anathemas against any man who would 
grant you an ioto. JVoxc, every man affects to be liberal, and the 
only question with some, is the time of the concession ; with others, 
the extent of the concessions ; with many, the nature of the se- 



SPEECH AT DUBUN. 41 

curlties you should afford ; whilst a great multitude, in which I 
am proud to class myself, think that your emancipation should be 
immediate, universal, and unrestricted. Such has been the pro- 
gress of the human mind out of doors, in consequence of the pow- 
erful eloquence, argument, and policy elicited by those discussions 
which your friends now have, for the first time, found out to be 
precipitate. Now let us see what has been the effect produced 
within the doors of Parliament. For twenty years you were silent, 
and of course you were neglected. The consequence was most 
natural. Why should Parliament grant privileges to men who 
did not think those privileges worth the solicitation ? Then rose 
your agitators, as they are called by those bigots who are trem- 
bling at the effect of their arguments on the community, and 
who, as a matter of course, take every opportunity of calumni- 
ating them. Ever since that period your cause has been advan- 
cing. Take the numerical proportions in the House of Commons 
on each subsequent discussion. In 1805, the first time it was 
brought forward in the Imperial legislature, and it was then aided 
by the powerful eloquence of Fox, there was a majority against 
even taking your claims into consideration, of no less a number 
than 212. It was an appalling omen. In 1808, however, on the 
next discussion, that majority was diminished to 103. In 1810 it 
decreased to 104. In 1811 it dwindled to 64, and at length in 
1812, on the motion of Mr. Canning, and it is not a little re- 
markable that the first successful exertion in your favour was 
made by an English member, your enemies fled the field, and you 
had the triumphant majority to support you of 129 ! Now, is 
this not demonstration 1 What becomes now of those who say 
discussion has not been of use to you : but I need not have re- 
sorted to arithmetical calculation. Men become ashamed of 
combating with axioms. Truth is omnipotent, and must prevail; 
it forces its way with the fire and the precision of the morning 
sun-beam. Vapours may impede the infancy of its progress; 
but the very resistance that would check only condenses and 
concentrates it, until at length it goes forth in the fullness of its 
meridian, all life and sight and lustre, the minutest objects visible 
in its refulgence. You lived for centuries on the vegetable diet 
and eloquent silence of this Pythagorean policy ; and the conse- 
quence was, when you thought yourselves mightily dignified, and 
mightily interesting, the whole world was laughing at your phi- 
F 



42 SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 

losophy, and sending its aliens to take possession of your birth- 
right. I have given you a good reason for urging your discussion, 
by having shown you that discussion has always gained you pro- 
selytes. But is it the time ? says Mr. Grattan. Yes, Sir, it is the 
time, peculiarly the time, unless indeed the great question of Irish 
liberty is to be reserved as a weapon in the hands of a party to 
wield against the weakness of the British minister. But why should 
I delude you by talking about time ! Oh ! there will never be a 
time with Bigotry ! She has no head, and cannot think ; she has 
no heart, and cannot feel ; when she moves, it is in wrath ; when 
she pauses, it is amid ruin ; her prayers are curses, her communion 
is death, her vengeance is eternity, her decalogue is written in 
the blood of her victims ; and if she stoops for a moment from 
her infernal flight, it is upon some kindred rock to whet her vul- 
ture fang for keener rapine, and replume her wing for a more 
sanguinary desolation ! I appeal from this infernal, grave-stalled 
fury, I appeal to the good sense, to the policy, to the gratitude 
of England ; and I make my appeal peculiarly at this moment, 
when all the illustrious potentates of Europe are assembled to- 
gether in the British capital, to hold the great festival of univer- 
sal peace and universal emancipation. Perhaps when France, 
flushed with success, fired by ambition, and infuriated by enmity ; 
her avowed aim and universal conquest, her means the confede- 
rated resources of the Continent, her guide the greatest military 
genius a nation fertile in prodigies has produced — a man who 
seemed born to invest w^hat had been regular, to defile what had 
been venerable, to crush what had been established, and to create, 
as if by a magic impulse, a fairy world, peopled by the paupers 
he had commanded into kings, and based by the thrones he had 
crumbled in his caprices — perhaps when such a powder, so led, so 
organised, and so incited, was in its noon of triumph, the timid 
might tremble even at the charge that would save, or the con- 
cession that would strengthen. — But now, — her allies faithless, 
her conquests despoiled, her territory dismembered, her legions 
defeated, her leader dethroned, and her reigning prince our ally 
by treaty, our debtor by gratitude, and our alienable friend by 
every solemn obligation of civilized society, — the objection is our 
strength, and the obstacle our battlement. Perhaps when the 
Pope was in the power of our enemy, however slender the pre- 
text, bigotry might have rested on it. The inference was false 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 43 

as to Ireland, and it was ungenerous as to Rome. The Irish 
Catholic, firm in his faith, bows to tlie Pontiff's spiritual supre- 
macy, but he would spurn the Pontiff's temporal interference. 
If, with the spirit of an earthly domination, he were to issue to- 
morrow his despotic mandate, Catholic Ireland with one voice 
would answer him : " Sire, we bow with reverence to your spi- 
ritual mission : the descendant of Saint Peter, we freely acknow- 
ledge you the head of our church, and the organ of our creed : 
but. Sire, if we have a church, we cannot forget that we also 
have a country ; and when you attempt to convert your mitre 
into a crown, and your crozier into a sceptre, you degrade the 
majesty of your high delegation, and grossly miscalculate upon 
our acquiescence. No foreign power shall regulate the allegiance 
which we owe to our sovereign ; it was the fault of our fathers 
tliat one Pope forged our fetters ; it will be our own, if we allow 
them to be riveted by another." Such would be the answer of 
universal Ireland; such was her answer to the audacious menial, 
who dared to dictate her unconditional submission to an act of 
Parliament which emancipated by penalties, and redressed by 
insult. But, Sir, it never would have entered into the contem- 
plation of the Pope to have assumed such an authority. His 
character was a sufficient shield against the imputation, and his 
policy must have taught him, that, in grasping at the shadow of 
a temporal power, he should but risk the reality of his ecclesias- 
tical supremacy. Thus was Parliament doubly guarded against 
a foreign usurpation. The people upon whom it was to act de- 
precate its authority, and the power to which it was imputed 
abhors its ambition ; the Pope would not exert it if he could, 
and the people would not obey it if he did. Just precisely upon 
the same foundation rested the aspersions which were cast upon 
your creed. How did experience justify them ? Did Lord Wel- 
lington find that religious faith made any difference amid the 
thunder of the battle ? Did the Spanish soldier desert liis colours 
because his General believed not in the real presence ? Did the 
brave Portuguese neglect his orders to negotiate about mysteries? 
Or what comparison did the hero draw between the jjolicy of 
England and the piety of Spain, when at one moment he led the 
heterodox legions to victory, and the very next was obliged to 
fly from his own native flag, waving defiance on the walls of 
Borgos, where the Irish exile planted and sustained it ? What 



44 SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 

must he have felt wlicn in a foreign land he was obliged to com- 
mand brother against brother, to raise the sword of blood, and 
drown the cries of nature with the artillery of death ? What 
were the sensations of our hapless exiles, when they recognized 
the features of their long-lost country 1 when they heard the 
accents of the tongue they loved, or caught the cadence of the 
simple melody which once lulled them to sleep within a mother's 
arms, and cheered the darling circle they must behold no more '( 
Alas, how the poor banished heart delights in the memory that 
song associates ! He heard it in happier days, when the parents 
he adored, the maid he loved, the friends of his soul, and the 
green fields of his infancy were round him ; when his labours 
were illumined with the sun-shine of the heart, and his humble 
Imt was a palace — for it was home. His soul is full, his eye suf- 
fused, he bends from the battlements to catch the cadence, when 
his death-shot, sped by a brother's hand, lays him in his grave — 
the victim of a code calling itself Christian ! Who shall say, 
heart-rending as it is, this picture is from fancy 1 Has it not oc- 
curred in Spain ? May it not, at this instant, be acting in Ame- 
rica ? Is there any country in the universe in which these brave 
exiles of a barbarous bigotry are not to be found refuting the 
calumnies that banished and rewarding the hospitality that re- 
ceived them 1 Yet England, enlightened England, who sees them 
in every field of the old world and the new, defending the various 
flags of every faith, supports the injustice of her exclusive con- 
stitution, by branding upon them the ungenerous accusation of 
an exclusive creed ! England, the ally of Catholic Portugal, the 
ally of Catholic Spain, the ally of Catholic France, the Friend 
of the Pope ! England, who seated a Catholic bigot in Madrid ! 
who convoyed a Catholic Braganza to the Brazils ! who en- 
throned a Catholic Bourbon in Paris ! who guaranteed a Catholic 
establishment in Canada ! who gave a constitution to Catholic 
Hanover ! England, who searches the globe for Catholic griev- 
ances to redress, and Catholic Princes to restore, will not trust 
the Catholic at home, who spends his blood and treasure in her 
service ! Is this generous ? Is this consistent ? Is it just ? Is it 
even politic ? Is it the act of a wise country to fetter the ener- 
gies of an entire population ? Is it the act of a Christian country 
todoitinthenameof God ? Is it politic in a government to de- 
grade part of the body by which it is supported, or pious to make 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 45 

Providence a party to their degradation ? There are societies 
in England for discountenancing vice ; there are Christian asso- 
ciations for distributing the Bible ; there are voluntary missions 
for converting the heathen : but Ireland, the seat of their govern- 
ment, the stay of their empire, their associate by all the ties of 
nature and of interest, how has she benefited by the gospel of 
which they boast 1 Has the sweet spirit of Christianity appeared 
on our plains in the character of her precepts, breathing the air 
and robed in the beauties of the world to which she would lead 
us ; with no argument but love, no look but peace, no wealth but 
piety ; her creed comprehensive as the arch of heaven, and her 
charities bounded but by the circle of creation 1 Or, has she 
been let loose amongst us, in form of fury, and in act of demon, 
her heart festered with the fires of hell, her hands clotted with 
the gore of earth, withering alike in her repose and in her pro- 
gress, her path apparent by the print of blood, and her pause 
denoted by the expanse of desolation ? Gospel of Heaven ! is 
this thy herald ? God of the universe ! is this thy hand-maid ? 
Christian of the ascendancy ! how would you ansv^^er the disbe- 
lieving infidel, if he asked you, should he estimate the Cliristian 
doctrine by the Christian practice ; if he dwelt upon those pe- 
riods when the human victim writhed upon the altar of the 
peaceful Jesus, and the cross, crimsoned with his blood, became 
little better than a stake to the sacrifice of his votaries ; if he 
pointed to Ireland, where the word of peace was the war-whoop 
of destruction ; where the son was bribed against the father, and 
the plunder of the parent's property was made a bounty on the 
recantation of the parent's creed ; where the march of the hu- 
man mind was stayed in his name who had inspired it with reason, 
and any effort to liberate a fellow-creature from his intellectual 
bondage was sure to be recompensed by the dungeon or the 
scaflfold; where ignorance was so long a legislative command, and 
piety legislative crime ; where religion was placed as a barrier 
between the sexes, and the intercourse of nature was pronounced 
felony by law; where God's worship was an act of stealth, 
and his ministers sought amongst the savages of the woods that 
sanctuary which a nominal civilization had denied them ; where 
at this instant conscience is made to blast every hope of genius, 
and every energy of ambition ; and the Catholic who would rise 
to any station of trust, must, in the face of his country, deny the 



4G SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 

faith of Ills fathers ; where the preferments of earth are only to 
he obtained by the forfeiture of Heaven ? 

" Unprized are her sons till tliey learn to betray, 
Undistinguish'd they live if they shame not their sires ; 
And the torch that would light tiiem to dignity's way, 
Must be caught from the pile where their country expires !" 

How, let me ask, how would the Christian zealot droop beneath 
this catalogue of Christian qualifications ? But, thus it is, when 
sectarians differ on account of mysteries ; in the heat and acri- 
mony of the causeless contest, religion, the glory of one world, 
and the guide of another, drifts from the splendid circle in which 
she shone, in the comet-maze of uncertainty and error. The 
code, against which you petition, is a vile compound of impiety 
and impolicy : impiety, because it debases in the name of God ; 
impolicy, because it disqualifies under pretence of government. 
If we are to argue from the services of Protestant Ireland, to the 
losses sustained by the bondage of Catholic Ireland, and I do not 
see why we should not, the state which continues such a system 
is guilty of little less than a political suicide. It matters little 
where the Protestant Irishman has been employed ; whether with 
Burke, wielding the senate with his eloquence ; with Castlereagh, 
guiding the cabinet with his counsels ; v^dth Barry, enriching the 
arts by his pencil ; with Swift, adorning literature by his genius ; 
with Goldsmith or with Moore, softening the heart by their melo- 
dy ; or with Wellington, chaining victory at his car, he may boldly 
challenge the competition of the world. Oppressed and impover- 
ished as our country is, every muse has cheered, every art adorn- 
ed, and every conquest crowned her. Plundered, she was not 
poor, for her character enriched ; attainted, she was not titleless, 
for her services ennobled; literally outlawed into eminence, and 
fettered into fame, the fields of her exile were immortalized by her 
deeds, and the links of her chain became decorated by her laurels. 
Is this fancy, or is it fact ? Is there a department in the state 
in which Irish genius does not possess a predominance ? Is there a 
conquest which it does not achieve, or a dignity which it does not 
adorn 1 At this instant, is there a country in the world to which 
England has not deputed an Irishman as her representative ? 
She has sent Lord Moira to India, Sir Gore Ousely to Ispahan, Lord 
Stuart to Vienna, Lord Castlereagh to Congress, Sir Henry Wel- 
lesly to Madrid, Mr. Canning to Lisbon, Lord Strangford to the 
Brazils, Lord Clancarty to Holland, Lord Wellington to Paris — 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 47 

all Irishmen ! Whether it results from accident or from merit, 
can there be a more cutting sarcasm on the policy of England ! 
Is it not directly saying to her, " here is a country from one fifth 
of whose people you depute the agents of your most august dele- 
gation, the remaining four fifths of which by your odious bigotry, 
you incapacitate from any station of office or of trust !" It is 
adding all that is weak in impolicy to all that is wicked in ingra- 
titude. What is her apology '? Will she pretend that the Deity 
imitates her injustice, and incapacitates the intellect as she has 
done the creed? After making Providence a pretence for her 
code, will she also make it a party to her crime, and arraign the 
universal spirit of partiality in his dispensations ? Is she not con- 
tent with Him as a Protestant God, unless He also consents to be- 
come a Catholic demon ? But, if the charge were true ; if the 
Irish Catholic were imbruted and debased, Ireland's conviction 
would be England's crime, and your answer to the bigot's charge 
should be the bigot's conduct. What, then ! is this the result of 
six centuries of your government '' Is this the connection which 
you called a benefit to Ireland? Have your protecting laws 
so debased them, that the very privilege of reason is worthless in 
their possession ? Shame ! oh, sliarne ! to the government where 
the people are barbarous? The day is not distant when they 
made the education of a Catholic a crime ; and yet they arraign 
the Catholic for ignorance ! The day is not distant when they 
proclaimed the celebration of the Catholic worship a felony, and 
yet they complain that the Catholic is not moral ! What folly ! 
Is it to be expected that the people are to emerge in a moment 
from the stupor of a protracted degradation ? There is not per- 
haps to be traced upon the map of national misfortune, a spot so 
truly and so tediously deplorable as Ireland. Other lands, no 
doubt, have had their calamities. To the horrors of revolution, the 
miseries of despotism, the scourges of anarchy, they have in their 
turns been subject. But it has been only in their turns ; the visita- 
tions of wo, though severe, have not been eternal ; the hour of pro- 
bation, or of punishment, has passed away ; and the tempest, after 
having emptied the vial of its wrath, has given place to the 
serenity of the calm and of the sunshine. — Has this been the 
case with respect to our miserable country ? Is there, save in 
the visionary world of tradition — is there in the progress, either 
of record or recollection, one verdant spot in the desert of our 



48 SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 

annals, where patriotism can tind repose, or philanthropy re- 
freshment 1 Oh, indeed, posterity will pause with wonder on the 
melancholy page which shall portray the story of a people 
amongst whom the policy of man, has waged an eternal warfare 
with the providence of God, blighting into deformity all that was 
beauteous, and into famine all that was abundant. I repeat, how- 
ever, the charge to be false. The Catholic mind in Ireland has 
made advances scarcely to be hoped in the short interval of its 
partial emancipation. But what encouragement has the Catholic 
parent to educate his offspring 1 Suppose he sends his son, the 
hope of his pride, and the wealth of his heart, into the army ; the 
child justifies his parental anticipation ; he is moral in his habits, 
he is strict in his discipline, he is daring in the field, and temperate 
at the board, and patient in the camp ; the first in the charge, 
and the last in the retreat ; with a hand to achieve, and a head to 
guide, and temper to conciliate ; he combines the skill of Welling- 
ton with the clemency of Caesar and the courage of Turenne — 
yet he can never rise — he is a Catholic ! — Take another instance. 
Suppose him at the bar. He has spent his nights at the lamp, and 
his days in the forum ; the rose has withered from his cheek mid 
the drudgery of form ; the spirit has fainted in his heart mid the 
analysis of crime ; he has foregone the pleasures of his youth and 
the associates of his heart, and all the fairy enchantments in 
which fancy may have wrapped him. Alas ! for what 1 Though 
genius flashed from his eye, and eloquence rolled from his lips; 
though he spoke with the tongue of TuUy, and argued with the 
learning of Coke, and thought with the purity of Fletcher, he 
can never rise — he is a Catholic ! Merciful God ! what a state 
of society is this, in which thy worship is interposed as a dis- 
qualification upon thy Providence ! Behold, in a word, the effects 
of the code against which you petition ; it disheartens exertion, 
it disqualifies merit, it debiUtates the state, it degrades the God- 
head, it disobeys Christianity, it makes religion an article of traf- 
fic, and its founder a monopoly ; and for ages it has reduced a 
country, blessed with every beauty of nature, and every bounty 
of Providence, to a state unparalleled under any constitution pro- 
fessing to be free, or any government pretending to be civilized. 
To justify this enormity, there is now no argument. Now is 
the time to concede with dignity that which was never denied 
without injustice. Who can tell how soon we may require all the 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 49 

zeal of our united population to secure our very existence ? Who 
can argue upon the continuance of this calm 1 Have we not 
seen the labour of ages overthrown, and the whim of a day 
erected on its ruins; establishments the most soHd, withering at a 
word, and visions the most whimsical realized at a wish ? crowns 
crumbled, discords confederated, kings become vagabonds, and 
vagabonds made kings at the capricious phrenzy of a village ad- 
venturer ? Have we not seen the whole political and moral 
world shaking as with an earthquake, and shapes the most fan- 
tastic and formidable and frightful, heaved into life by the quiver- 
ings of the convulsion ? The storm has passed over us ; England 
has survived it ; if she is wise, her present prosperity will be but 
the handmaid to her justice ; if she is pious, the peril she has es- 
caped will be but the herald of her expiation. Thus much 
have I said in the way of argument to the enemies of your ques- 
tion. Let me offer an humble opinion to its friends. The first 
and almost the sole request which an advocate would make to you 
is, to remain united ; rely on it, a divided assault can never over- 
come a consolidated resistance. I allow that an educated aris- 
tocracy, are as a head to the people, without which they cannot 
think : but then the people are as hands to the aristocracy, with- 
out which it cannot act. G)ncedc, then, a little to even each 
other's prejudices ; recollect that individual sacrifice is universal 
strength ; and can there be a nobler altar than the altar of your 
country ? This same spirit of conciliation should be extended 
even to your enemies. If England will not consider that a 
brow of suspicion is but a bad accompaniment to an act of 
grace ; if she will not allow that kindness may make those friends 
whom even oppression could not make foes ; if she will not con- 
fess that the best security she can have from Ireland is by giving 
Ireland an interest in her constitution ; still, since her power is 
the shield of her prejudices, you should concede where you can- 
not conquer ; it is wisdom to yield, when it has become hopeless 
to combat. 

There is but one concession which I would never advise, and 
which, were I a Catholic, I would never make. You will per- 
ceive that I allude to any interference with your clergy. That 
was the crime of Mr. Grattan's security bill. It made the 
patronage of your religion the ransom for your liberties, and 
bought the favour of the crown by the surrender of the church. 

G 



50 SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 

It is a vicious principle ; it is the cause of all your sorrows. If 
there had not been a state-establishment, there would not have 
been a Catholic bondage. B}'^ that incestuous conspiracy be- 
tween the altar and the throne, infidelity has achieved a more 
extended dominion than by all the sophisms of her philosophy, or 
all the terrors of her persecution. It makes God's apostle a 
court-appendage, and God himself a court-purveyor ; it carves 
the cross into a chair of state, where, with grace on his brow, and 
gold in his hand, the little perishable puppet of this world's vanity 
makes Omnipotence a menial to its power, and Eternity a pan- 
der to its profits. Be not a party to it. As you have spurned 
the temporal interference of the Pope, resist the spiritual juris- 
diction of the crown. As I do not think that you, on the one 
hand, could surrender the patronage of your religion to the King 
v^^ithout the most unconscientious compromise, so, on the other 
hand, I do not think the King could ever conscientiously receive 
it. Suppose he receives it ; if he exercises it for the advantage 
of your church, he directly violates the coronation-oath, which 
binds him to the exclusive interest of the Church of England ; 
and if he does not intend to exercise it for your advantage, to 
what purpose does he require from you its surrender? But what 
pretence has England for this interference with your religion ? It 
was the religion of her most glorious era ; it was the religion of 
her most ennobled patriots ; it was the religion of the wisdom that 
framed her constitution ; it was the religion of the valour that 
achieved it; it would have been to this day the religion of her em- 
pire, had it not been for the lawless lust of a murderous adulterer. 
What right has she to suspect your church ? When her thousand 
sects were brandishing the fragments of their faith against each 
other, and Christ saw his garment without a seam, a piece of 
patch-work for every mountebank who figured in the pantomime ; 
when her Babel temple rocked at every breath of her Priestleys 
and her Paynes, Ireland, proof against the menace of her power, 
was proof also against the perilous impiety of her example. But 
if as Catholics you should guard it, the palladium of your creed, 
not less as Irishmen should you prize it, the relic of your country. 
Deluge after deluge has desolated her provinces. The monuments 
of art which escaped the barbarism of one invader, fell beneath the 
still more savage civilization of another. Alone, amid the solitude, 
your temple stood like some majestic monument amid the desert 



SPEECH AT DUBLIN. 51 

of antiquity, just in its proportions, sublime in its associations, 
rich in the virtue of its saints, cemented by the blood of its mar- 
tyrs, pouring forth for ages the unbroken series of its venerable 
hierarchy, and only the more magnificent from the ruins by which 
it was surrounded. Oh ! do not for any temporal boon betray 
the great principles which are to purchase you an eternity ! 
Here, from your very sanctuary, — here, with my hand on the 
endangered altars of your faith, in the name of that God, for the 
freedom of whose worship we are so nobly struggling — I conjure 
you, let no unholy hand profane the sacred ark of your religion ; 
preserve it inviolate ; its light is " light from heaven ;" follow it 
through all the perils of your journey ; and, hke the fiery pillar of 
the captive Israel, it will cheer the desert of your bondage, and 
guide to the land of your liberation ! 



PETITION 

REFERRED TO IN THE PRECEDING SPEECH. 

DRAWN BY MR. PHILLIPS, 

AT THE REQUEST OF THE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF IRELAND. 



To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great 
Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled : 

The humble Petition of the Roman CathoUcs of Ireland, whose 
Names are undersigned on behalf of themselves, and others, pro- 
fessing the Roman Catholic Religion, — Showeth, 

That we, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, again ap- 
proach the legislature with a statement of the grievances under 
which we labour, and of which we most respectfully, but at the 
same time most firmly solicit the efTectual redress. Our wrongs 
are so notorious, and so numerous, that their minute detail is 
quite unnecessary, and would indeed be impossible, were it 
deemed expedient. Ages of persecution on the one hand, and of 
patience on the other, sufficiently attest our sufferings and our 
submission. Privations have been answered only by petition, 
indignities by remonstrance, injuries by forgiveness. It has been 
a misfortune to have suffered for the sake of our religion ; but 
it has also been a pride to have borne the best testimony to the 
purity of our doctrine, by the meekness of our endurance. 

We have sustained the power which spurned us ; we have 
nerved the arm which smote us ; we have lavished our strength, 
our talent, and our treasures, and buoyed up, on the prodigal 
effusion of our young blood, the triumphant Ark of British 
Liberty. 

We approach, then, with confidence, an enlightened legisla- 
ture : in the name of Nature, we ask our rights as men ; in the 
name of the Constitution, we ask our privileges as subjects; in 

52 



PETITION. 53 

the name of God, we ask the sacred protection of unpersecuted 
piety as Christians. 

Are securities required of us? We offer them — the best se- 
curities a throne can have — the affections of a people. We offer 
faith that was never violated, hearts that were never corrupted, 
valour that never crouched. Every hour of peril has proved our 
allegiance, and every field of Europe exhibits its example. 

We abjure all temporal authority, except that of our Sove- 
reign ; we acknowledge no civil pre-eminence, save that of our 
constitution ; and, for our lavish and voluntary expenditure, we 
only ask a reciprocity of benefits. 

Separating, as we do, our civil rights from our spiritual duties, 
we humbly desire that they may not be confounded. We " ren- 
der unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," but we must also 
" render unto God the things that are God's." Our church could 
nort descend to claim a state-authority, nor do we ask for it a 
state-aggrandizement : — its hopes, its powers, and its pretensions^ 
are of another world ; and, when we raise our hands most hum- 
bly to the state, our prayer is not, that the fetters may be 
transferred to the hands which are raised for us to Heaven. We 
would not erect a splendid shrine, even to Liberty, on the ruins 
of the Temple. 

In behalf, then, of five millions of a brave and loyal people, 
we call upon the legislature to annihilate the odious bondage 
which bows down the mental, physical, and moral energies of 
Ireland ; and, in the name of that Gospel which breathes charity 
towards all, we seek freedom of conscience for all the inhabitants 
of the British empire. 

May it tJierefore please this honourable House to abolish all 
penal and disabling laws, which in any manner infringe religious 
liberty, or restrict the free enjoyment of the sacred rights of 
conscience, within these realms. 

And your petitioners will ever pray. 



THE 

ADDRESS 

TO H. R. H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES: 

DRAWN DY MR. FfllLLIPS, AT THE REQUEST OF THE ROMAN 
CATHOLICS OF IRELAND. 



May it please Your Royal HigJuiess, 

We, the Roman Catholic people of Ireland, beg leave to offer 
our unfeigned congratulations on your providential escape from 
the conspiracy which so lately endangered both your life and 
honour — a conspiracy, unmanly in its motives, imnatural in its 
object, and unworthy in its means — a conspiracy, combining so 
monstrous an union of turpitude and treason, that it is difficult 
to say, whether royalty would have suiTercd more from its suc- 
cess, than human nature has from its conception. Our allegiance 
is not less shocked at the infernal spirit which would sully the 
diadem, by breathing on its most precious ornament, the virtue 
of its wearer, than our best feelings are at the inhospitable base- 
ness, which would betray the innocence of a female in a land of 
strangers ! 

Deem it not disrespectful, illustrious Lady, that, from a people 
proverbially ardent in the cause of the defenceless, the shout of 
virtuous congratulation should receive a feeble echo. Our harp 
has long been unused to tones of gladness, and our hills but 
faintly answer the unusual accent. Your heart, however, can 
appreciate the silence inflicted by suffering ; and ours, alas, 
feels but too acutely that the commiseration is sincere which 
flows from sympathy. 

Let us hope that, when congratulating virtue in your royal 
person, on her signal triumph over the perjured, the profligate, 
and the corrupt, we may also rejoice in the completion of its 
consequences. Let us hope that the society of your only child 
again solaces vour dignified retirement; and that, to the misfor- 

54 



ADDRESS. 55 

tunc of being a widowed wife, is not added the pang of being a 
childless motlier ! 

But if, Madam, our hopes are not fulfilled; if, indeed, the cry 
of an indignant and unanimous people is disregarded ; console 
yourself with the reflection, that, though your exiled daughter 
may not hear the precepts of virtue from your lips, she may at 
least study the practice of it in your example. 



A SPEECH 

DELIVERED BY MR. PHILLIPS, 

AT A PUBLIC DINNER GIVEN TO HIM BY THE FRIENDS OF CIVIL AND 
RELIGIOUS LIBERTY IN LIVERPOOL. 



Believe me, Mr. Chairman, I feel too sensibly the high and 
unmerited compliment you have paid me, to attempt any other 
return than the simple expression of my gratitude ; to be just, 
I must be silent ; but though the tongue is mute, my heart is 
much more than eloquent. The kindness of friendship, the tes- 
timony of any class, however humble, carries with it no trifling 
gratification : but, stranger as I am, to be so distinguished in this 
great city, whose wealth is its least recommendation; the empo- 
rium of commerce, hberality, and public spirit ; the birth-place 
of talent ; the residence of integrity ; the field where freedom 
seems to have rallied the last allies of her cause, as if, with the 
noble consciousness that, though patriotism could not wreathe the 
laurel round her brow, genius should at least raise it over her 
ashes ; to be so distinguished. Sir, and in such a place, does, I 
confess, inspire me with a vanity which even a sense of my im- 
importance cannot entirely silence. Indeed, sir, the ministerial 
critics of Liverpool were right. I have no claim to this enthusi- 
astic welcome. But I cannot look upon this testimonial so much 
as a tribute to myself, as an omen to that country with whose 
fortunes the dearest sympathies of my soul are intertwined. Oh 
yes, I do foresee when she shall hear with what courtsey her most 
pretcntionless advocate has been treated — how the same wind 
that wafts her the intelligence, will revive that flame within her, 
which the blood of ages has not been able to extinguish. It 
may be a delusive hope, but I am glad to grasp at any phantom 
that flits across the solitude of that country's desolation. On this 
subject you can scarcely be ignorant, for you have an Irishman 
resident amongst you, whom I am proud to call my friend ; whose 
fidelity to Ireland no absence can diminish ; who has at once the 
|l.. 56 



SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 57 

honesty to be candid, and the talent to be convincing. I need 
scarcely say I allude to Mr. Casey. I knew, sir, the statue was 
too striking to require a name upon the pedestal. Alas, Ireland 
has little now to console her, except the consciousness of having 
produced such men. It would be a reasonable adulation in me 
to deceive you. Six centuries of base misgovernment, of cause- 
less, ruthless, and ungrateful persecution, have now reduced 
that country to a crisis, at which I know not whether the friend 
of humanity has most cause to grieve or rejoice ; because I am 
not sure that the same feeling which prompts the tear at hu- 
man sufferings, ought not to triumph in that increased infliction 
which may at length tire them out of endurance, t trust in God 
a change of system may in time anticipate the results of despe- 
ration ; but you may quite depend on it, a period is approaching 
when, if penalty does not pause in the pursuit, patience will turn 
short on the pursuer. Can you wonder at it 1 Contemplate Ire- 
land during any given period of England's rule, and what a pic- 
ture does she exhibit ! Behold her created in all the prodigality 
of nature ; with a soil that anticipates the husbandman's desires; 
with harbours courting the commerce of the world ; with rivers 
capable of the most effective navigation ; with the ore of every 
metal struggling through her surface ; with a people, brave, ge- 
nerous, and intellectual, literally forcing their way through the 
disabilities of their own country into the highest stations of every 
other, and well rewarding the policy that promotes them, by 
achievements the most heroic, and allegiance without a blemish. 
How have the successive governments of England demeaned 
themselves to a nation, offering such an accumulation of moral 
and political advantages ! See it in the state of Ireland at this 
instant ; in the universal bankruptcy that overwhelms her ; in 
the loss of her trade ; in the annihilation of her manufactures ; 
in the deluge of her debt ; in the divisions of her people ; in all 
the loatlisome operations of an odious, monopolizing, hypocri- 
tical fanaticism on the one hand, wrestling with the untiring 
but natural reprisals of an irritated population on the other ! It 
required no common ingenuity to reduce such a country to such 
a situation. But it has been done ; man has conquered the bene- 
ficence of the Deity ; his harpy touch has changed the viands to 
corruption ; and that land, which you might have possessed in 
health and wealth and vigour, to support you in your hour of 

H ^ 



58 SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 

need, now writhes in the agonies of death, unable even to lift 
the shroud with which famine and fatuity try to encumber her 
convulsion. This is what I see a pensioned press denominates 
tranquillity. Oh, wo to the land threatened with such tranquil- 
lity ; solitndinem faciimt, pacem appellant ; it is not yet the tran- 
quillity of soHtude ; it is not yet the tranquillity of death ; but if 
you would know what it is, go forth in the silence of creation, 
when every wind is hushed, and every echo mute, and all nature 
seems to listen in dumb and terrified and breathless expectation; 
go forth in such an hour, and see the terrible tranquillity by 
which you are surrounded ! How could it be otherwise; when 
for ages upon ages invention has fatigued itself with expedients 
for irritation ; when, as I have read with horror in the progress 
of my legal studies, the homicide of a " mere Irishman" was 
considered justifiable ; and when his ignorance was the origin of 
all his crimes, his education was prohibited by Act of Parlia- 
ment ! — when the people were worm-eaten by the odious vermin 
which a church and state adultery had spawned ; when a bad 
heart and brainless head where the fangs by which every fo- 
reign adventurer and domestic traitor fastened upon office ; when 
the property of the native was but an invitation to plunder, and 
his non-acquiescence the signal for confiscation ; when rehgion 
itself was made the odious pretence for every persecution, and 
the fires of hell were alternately kindled with the cross, and 
quenched in the blood of its defenceless followers ! I speak of 
times that are passed : but can their recollections, can their con- 
sequences be so readily eradicated. Why, however, should I 
refer to periods that are distant ? Behold, at this instant, five 
millions of her people disqualified on account of their faith, and 
that by a country professing freedom ! and that under a govern- 
ment calling itself christian ! You (when I say you, of course I 
mean, not the high-minded people of England, but the men who 
misgovern us both) seem to have taken out a roving commission 
in search of grievances abroad, while you overlook the calamities 
at your own door, and of your own infliction. You traverse the 
ocean to emancipate the African ; you cross the line to convert 
the Hindoo; you hurl your thunder against the savage Algerine; 
but your own brethren at home, who speak the same tongue, 
acknowledge the same King, and kneel to the same God, cannot 
get one visit from your itinerant humanity ! Oh, such a system 



SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 59 

is almost too abominable for a name ; it is a monster of impiety, 
impolicy, ingratitude, and injustice ! The pagan nations of an- 
tiquity scarcely acted on such barbarous principles. Look to 
ancient Rome, with her sword in one hand and her constitution 
in the other, healing the injuries of conquest with the embrace 
of brotherhood, and wisely converting the captive into the citi- 
zen. Look to her great enemy, the glorious Carthaginian, at 
the foot of the Alps, ranging his prisoners round him, and by the 
politic option of captivity or arms, recruiting his legions with the 
very men whom he had literally conquered into gratitude ! They 
laid their foundations deep in the human heart, and their success 
was proportionate to their policy. You complain of the violence 
of the Irish Catholic : can you wonder he is violent ? It is the 
consequence of your own infliction — 

" Tlie flesh will quiver wbere the pincers tear, 
The blood will follow where the knife is driven." 

Your friendship has been to him worse than hostility ; he feels 
its embrace but by the pressure of his fetters ! I am only amazed 
he is not more violent. He fills your exchequer, he fights your 
battles, he feeds your clergy from whom he derives no benefit, 
he shares your burdens, he shares your perils, he shares every 
thing except your privileges : can you wonder he is violent ? 
No matter what his merit, no matter what his claims, no matter 
what his services ; he sees himself a nominal subject, and a real 
slave ; and his children, the heirs, perhaps of his toils, perhaps 
of his talents, certainly of his disqualifications — ca7i yon wonder 
he is violeyit ? He sees every pretended obstacle to his eman- 
cipation vanished ; Catholic Europe your ally, the Bourbon 
on the throne, the Emperor a captive, the Pope a friend, the 
aspersions on his faith disproved by his allegiance to you 
against, alternately, every Catholic potentate in Cliristendom, 
and he feels himself branded with hereditary degradation — can 
you wonder, then, that he is violent ? He petitioned humbly ; his 
tameness was construed into a proof j)f apathy. He petitioned 
boldly ; his remonstrance was considered as an impudent auda- 
city. He petitioned in peace ; he was told it was not the time. 
He petitioned in war ; he was told it was not the time. A strange 
interval, a prodigy in politics, a pause between peace and war, 
which appeared to be just made for him, arose ; I allude to the 
period between the retreat of Louis and the restoration of Bo- 



60 SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 

naparle ; lie petitioned then, and he was told it was not the time. 
Oh, shame ! shame ! shame ! I hope he will petition no more to 
a parliament so equivocating. However, 1 am not sorry they 
did so equivocate, because I think they have suggested one com- 
mon remedy for the grieveances of both countries, and that re- 
medy is, a Reform of that Parliament. Without that, I plainly 
see, there is no hope for Ireland, there is no salvation for Eng- 
land ; they will act towards you as they have done towards us ; 
they will admit your reasoning, they will admire your eloquence, 
and they will prove their sincerity by a strict perseverance in 
the impolicy you have exposed, and the profligacy you have de- 
precated. Look to England at this moment. To what a state 
have they not reduced her ! Over this vast island, for whose 
wealth the winds of Heaven seemed to blow, covered as she 
once was with the gorgeous mantle of successful agriculture, all 
studded over with the gems of art and manufacture, there is 
now scarce an object but industry in rags, and patience in de- 
spair : the merchant without a ledger, the fields without a har- 
vest, the shops without a customer, the Exchange deserted, and 
the Gazette crowded, form the most heart-rending comments on 
that nefarious system, in support of which, peers and contractors, 
stock-jobbers and sinecurists, in short, the whole trained, collar- 
ed, pampered, and rapacious pack of ministerial beagles, have 
been, for half a century, in the most clamorous and discordant 
uproar ! During all this misery how are the pilots of the state 
employed ? Why, in feeding the bloated mammoth of sinecure ! 
in weighing the farthings of some underling's salary ! in preparing 
Ireland for a garrison, and England for a poor-house ! in the 
structure of Chinese palaces ! the decoration of dragoons, and 
the erection of public buildings ! Oh, it 's easily seen we 
have a saint in the Exchequer ! he has studied Scripture to some 
purpose ! the famishing people cry out for bread, and the scrip- 
tural minister gives them sto?ies ! Such has been the result of 
the blessed Pitt system, which amid oceans of blood, and eight 
hundred millions expenditure, has left you, after all your victories, 
a triumphant dupe, a trophied bankrupt. I have heard before 
of states ruined by the visitations of Providence, devastated by 
famine, wasted by fire, overcome by enemies ; but never until now 
did I see a state hke England, impoverished by her spoils, and 
conquered by her successes ! She has fought the fight of Europe; 



SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 61 

she has purchased all its coinahle blood ,- she has subsidized all its 
dependencies in their own cause ; she has conquered by sea, she 
has conquered by land ; she has got peace, and, of course, or the 
Pitt apostles would not have made peace, she has got her " in- 
demnity for the past, and security for the future ;" and here she 
is, after all her vanity and all her victories, surrounded by deso- 
lation, like one of the pyramids of Egypt ; amid the grandeur 
of the desert, full of magnificence and death, at once a trophy 
and a tomb ! 

The heart of any reflecting man must burn within him, when 
he thinks that the war, thus sanguinary in its operations, and 
confessedly ruinous in its expenditure, was even still more odious 
in its principle ! It was a war avowedly undertaken for the 
purpose of forcing France out of her undoubted right of choosing 
her own monarch ; a war which uprooted the very foundations 
of the English constitution ; which libelled the most glorious era 
in our national annals ; which declared tyranny eternal, and an- 
nounced to the people, amid the thunder of artillery, that, no 
matter how aggrieved, their only allowable attitude was that of 
supplication; which, when it told the French reformer of 1793, 
that his defeat was just, told the British reformer of 1688, his 
triumph was treason, and exhibited to history, the terrific farce 
of a Prince of the House of Brunswick, the creature of the Revo- 
lution, OFFERING A HUMAN HECATOMB UPON THE GRAVE OF JaMES 

THE Second ! What else have you done ? You have succeeded 
indeed in dethroning Napoleon, and you have dethroned a mon- 
arch, who, with all his imputed crimes and vices, shed a splendour 
around royalty, too powerful for the feeble vision of legitimacy 
even to bear. He had many faults ; I do not seek to palliate 
them. He deserted his principles ; I rejoice that he has suffered. 
But still let us be generous even in our enmities. How grand was 
his march ! How magnificent his destiny ! Say what we will. 
Sir, he will be the land-mark of our times in the eye of posterity. 
The goal of other men's speed was his starting-post ; crowns were 
his play-things, thrones his footstool ; he strode from victory to 
victory ; his path was " a plane of continued elevations." Sur- 
passing the boast of the too confident Roman, he but stamped 
upon the earth, and not only armed men, but states and dynas- 
ties, and arts and sciences, all that mind could imagine, or indus- 
try produce, started up, tlie creation of enchantment. He has 



63 SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 

fallen — as the late Mr. Whitebread said, " you made him and he 
unmade himself" — his own ambition was his glorious conqueror. 
He attempted, with a sublime audacity, to grasp the tires of 
Heaven, and his heathen retribution has been the vulture and 
the rock ! I do not ask what you have gained by it ; because, 
in place of gaining any thing, you are infinitely worse than when 
you commenced the contest ! But what have you done for Eu- 
rope ? What have you achieved for man 1 Have morals been 
ameliorated 1 Has liberty been strengthened 1 Has any one im- 
provement in politics or philosophy been produced ? Let us see 
how. You have restored to Portugal a prince of whom we know 
nothing, except that, when his dominions were invaded, his peo- 
ple distracted, his crown in danger, and all that could interest 
the highest energies of man at issue, he left his cause to be com- 
bated by foreign bayonets, and fled, with a dastard precipitation, 
to the shameful security of a distant hemisphere. You have re- 
stored to Spain a wretch of even worse than proverbial princely 
ingratitude ; who filled his dungeons, and fed his rack with the 
heroic remnant that braved war, and famine, and massacre 
beneath his l)anners; who rewarded patriotism with the prison, 
fidelity with the torture, heroism with the scaffold, and piety 
with the inquisition : whose royalty was published by the signa- 
ture of his death-warrants, and whose religion evaporated in the 
emhroideri7ig of petticoats for the Blessed Virgin! You have forced 
upon France a family to whom misfortune could teach no mercy, 
or experience wisdom ; vindictive in prosperity, servile in defeat, 
timid in the field, vacillating in the cabinet ; suspicion amongst 
themselves, discontent amongst their followers ; their memories 
tenacious but of the punishments they had provoked ; their piety 
active but in sul)serviency to their priesthood ; and their power 
passive but in the subjugation of their people ! Such are the 
dynasties you have corf erred on Europe. In the very act, that 
of enthroning three individuals of the same family, you have com- 
mitted in politics a capital error. But Providence has counter- 
mined the ruin you were preparing ; and whilst the impolicy 
prevents the chance, their impotency precludes the danger of a 
coalition. As to the rest of Europe, how has it been ameliorated ? 
What solitary benefit have the " deliverers" conferred ? They 
have partitioned the states of the feeble to feed the rapacity of 
the powerful ; and after having alternately adored and deserted 



SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 63 

Napoleon, they have wreaked their vengeance on the noble, but 
unfortunate fidelity that spurned their example. Do you want 
proofs ; look to Saxony, look to Genoa, look to Norway, but, 
above all, to Poland ! that speaking monument of regal mur- 
der and legitimate robbery — 

O ! bloodiest picture in tiie book of time — 
Sarmatia fell — unwept — without a crime ! 

Here was an opportunity to recompense that brave, heroic, gen- 
erous, martyred, and devoted people ; here was an opportunity 
to convince Jacobinism that crowns and crimes were not, of 
course, co-existent, and that the highway rapacity of one genera- 
tion might be atoned by the penitential retribution of another ! 
Look to Italy ; parcelled out to temporizing Austria — the land 
of the muse, the historian, and the hero ; the scene of every 
classic recollection ; the sacred fane of antiquity, where the 
genius of the world weeps and worships, and the spirits of the 
past start into life at the inspiring pilgrimage of some kindred 
Roscoe. You do yourselves honour by this noble, this natural en- 
thusiasm. Long may you enjoy the pleasure of possessing — never 
can you lose the pride of having produced the scholar without 
pedantry, the patriot without reproach, the Christian without 
superstition, the man without a blemish ! It is a subject I could 
dwell on with delight for ever. How painful our transition to 
the disgusting path of the deliverers. Look to Prussia, after 
fruitless toil and wreathless triumphs, mocked with the promise 
of a visionary constitution. Look to France, chained and plunder- 
ed, weeping over the tomb of her hopes and her heroes. Look to 
England, eaten by the cancer of an incurable debt, exhausted by 
poor rates, supporting a civil list of near a million and a half, 
annual amount, guarded by a standing army of 149,000 men, 
misrepresented by a House of Commons, ninety of whose mem- 
bers in places and pensions derive 200,000/. in yearly emoluments 
from the minister, mocked with a military peace, and girt with 
the fortifications of a war-establishment ! Shades of heroic mil- 
lions these are thy achievements ! Monster of Legitimacy, this 
is thy consummation ! The past is out of power, it is high time 
to provide against the future. Retrenchment and reform are now 
become not only expedient for our prosperity, but necessary to 
our very existence. Can any man of sense say that the present 



64 SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 

system should continue ? What ! when war and peace have al- 
ternately thrown every family in the empire into mourning and 
poverty, sliall the fattened tax-gatherer extort the starving 
manufacturer's last shilling, to swell the unmerited and enormous 
sinecure of some wealthy pauper ? Shall a borough-mongering 
faction convert what is misnamed the National Representation 
into a mere instrument for raising the supplies which are to 
gorge its own venality 1 Shall the mock dignitaries of Wliigism 
and Toryism lead their hungry retainers to contest the profits of 
an alternate ascendency over the prostrate interest of a too 
generous people? These are questions which I blush to ask, 
which I shudder to think must be either answered by the par- 
liament or the people. Let our rulers prudently avert the inter- 
rogation. We live in times when the slightest remonstrance 
should command attention, when the minutest speck that merely 
dots the edge of the political horizon, may be the car of the ap- 
proaching spirit of the storm ! Oh ! they are times whose omen 
no fancied security can avert ; times of the most awful and por- 
tentous admonition. Establishments the most solid, thrones the 
most ancient, coalitions the most powerful, have crumbled be- 
fore our eyes ; and the creature of a moment robed, and 
crowned, and sceptred, raised his fairy creation on their 
ruins ! The warning has been given ; may it not have been 
given in vain ! 

I feel, Sir, that the magnitude of the topics I have touched, 
and the imminency of the perils which seem to surround us, 
have led me far beyond the limits of a convivial meeting. I 
see I have my apology in your indulgence — but I cannot pre- 
vail on myself to trespass farther. Accept, again, Gentlemen, 
my most grateful acknowledgements. Never, never, can I for- 
get this day : in private life it shall be the companion of my 
solitude : and if, in the caprices of that fortune which will at 
times degrade the high and dignify the humble, I should here- 
after be called to any station of responsibility, I think I may at 
least fearlessly promise the friends who thus crowd around me, 
that no act of mine shall ever raise a blush at the recollection 
of their early encouragement. I hope, however, the benefit of 
this day will not be confined to the humble individual you have 
so honoured ; I hope it will cheer on the young aspirants after 



SPEECH AT LIVERPOOL. 65 

virtuous fame in both our countries, by proving to them, that 
however, for the moment, envy, or ignorance, or corruption, 
may depreciate them, there is a reward in store for the man 
who thinks with integrity and acts with decision. Gentlemen, 
you will add to the obligations you have already conferred, by 
delegating to me the honour of proposing to you the health of a 
man, whose virtues adorn, and whose talents powerfully advo- 
cate our cause ; I mean the health of your worthy Chairman, 
Mr. Shepherd. 



SPEECH OF MR. PHILLIPS 



IN THE CASE OP 



GUTHRIE r. STERNE, 
DELIVERED IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, DUBLIN. 



My Lord and Gentlemen, — In this case I am counsel for the 
plaintiff, who has deputed me, with the kind concession of my 
much more efficient colleagues, to detail to you the story of his 
misfortunes. In the course of a long friendship which has exist- 
ed between us, originating in mutual pursuits, and cemented by 
our mutual attachments, never, until this instant, did I feel any 
thing but pleasure in the claims which it created, or the duty 
which it imposed. In selecting me, however, from this bright 
array of learning and of eloquence, I cannot help being pained 
at the kindness of a partiality which forgets its interest in the 
exercise of its affection, and confides the task of practised wis- 
dom to the uncertain guidance of youth and inexperience. He 
has thought, perhaps, that truth needed no set phrase of speech ; 
that misfortune should not veil the furrows which its tears had 
burned ; or hide, under the decorations of an artful drapery, the 
heart-rent heavings with which its bosom throbbed. He has 
surely thought that, by contrasting mine with the powerful talents 
selected by his antagonist, he was giving you a proof that the 
appeal he made was to your reason, not to your feelings — to the 
integrity of your hearts, not the exasperation of your passions. 
Happily, however, for him, happily for you, happily for the coun- 
try, happily for the profession, on subjects such as this, the expe 
rience of the oldest amongst us is but slender ; deeds such as this 
are not indigenous to an Irish soil, or naturalized beneath an 
Irish climate. We hear of them, indeed, as we do of the earth- 
quakes that convulse, or the pestilence that infects less favoured 
regions ; but the record of the calamity is only read with the 
generous scepticism of innocence, or an involuntary thanksgiving 

66 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 67 

to the Providence that has preserved us. No matter how we 
may have graduated in the scale of nations, no matter with what 
wreath we may have been adorned, or what blessings we may 
have been denied ; no matter what may have been our feuds, 
our follies, or our misfortunes ; it has at least been universally 
conceded, that our hearths were the home of the domestic vir- 
tues, and that love, honour, and conjugal fidelity, were the dear 
and indisputable deities of our household ! around the fire-side of 
the Irish hovel, hospitality circumscribed its sacred circle ; and a 
provision to punish, created a suspicion of the possibility of its 
violation. But of all the ties that bound — of all the bounties that 
blessed her — Ireland most obeyed, most loved, most reverenced the 
nuptial contract. She saw it the gift of Heaven, the charm of 
earth, the joy of the present, the promise of the future, the in- 
nocence of enjoyment, the chastity of passion, the sacrament of 
love ; the slender curtain that shades the sanctuary of her mar- 
riage-bed, has in its purity the splendour of the mountain-snow, 
and for its protection the texture of the mountain-adamant. 
Gentlemen, that national sanctuary has been invaded; that 
venerable divinity has been violated ; and its tenderest pledges 
lorn from their shrine, by the polluted rapine of a kindless, heart- 
less, prayerless, remorseless adulterer ! To you — religion defiled, 
morals insulted, law despised, public order foully violated, and 
individual happiness wantonly wounded, make their melancholy 
appeal. You will hear the facts with as much patience as in- 
dignation will allow. — I will myself ask of you to adjudge them 
with as much mercy as justice will admit. 

The Plaintiff in this case is John Guthrie ; by birth, by edu- 
cation, by profession, and better than all, by practice and by 
principles, a gentleman. Believe me, it is not from the common- 
place of advocacy, or from the blind partiality of friendship 
that I say of him, that whether considering the virtues that 
adorn life, or the blandishments that endear it, he has few supe- 
riors. Surely, if a spirit that disdained dishonour, if a heart that 
knew not guile, if a life above reproach, and a character beyond 
suspicion, could have been a security against misfortunes, his lot 
must have been happiness. I speak in the presence of that pro- 
fession to which he was an ornament, and with whose members 
his manhood has been familiar ; and I say of him, with a con- 
fidence that defies refutation, that, whether we consider him in 



68 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

his private or his public station, as a man or a lawyer, there 
never breathed that being less capable of exciting enmity to- 
wards himself, or of offering, even by implication, an offence to' 
others. If he had a fault, it was, that, above crime, he was 
above suspicion ; and to that noblest error of a noble nature he 
has fallen a victim. Having spent his youth in the cultivation 
of a mind which must have one day led him to eminence, he be- 
came a member of the profession by which I am surrounded. 
Possessing, as he did, a moderate independence, and looking for- 
ward to the most flattering prospects, it was natural for him to 
select amongst the other sex, some friend who should adorn his 
fortunes, and deceive his toils. He found such a friend, or thought 
he found her, in the person of Miss Warren, the only daughter 
of an eminent solicitor. Young, beautiful, and accomplished, 
she was " adorned with all that earth or heaven could bestow to 
make her amiable." Virtue never found a fairer temple ; beauty 
never veiled a purer sanctuary ; the graces of her mind retained 
the admiration which her beauty had attracted ; and the eye, 
which her charms fired, became subdued and chastened in the 
modesty of their association. She was in the dawn of life, with 
all its fragrance round her, and yet so pure, that even the blush 
which sought to hide her lustre, but disclosed the vestal deity 
that burned beneath it. No wonder an adoring husband antici- 
pated all the joys this world could give him ; no wonder that 
the parental eye, which beamed upon their union, saw, in the 
perspective, an old age of happiness, and a posterity of honour. 
Methinks I see them at the sacred altar, joining those hands 
which Heaven commanded none should separate, repaid for 
many a pang of anxious nurture by the sweet smile of filial 
piety ; and in the holy rapture of the rite, worshiping the power 
that blessed their children, and gave them to hope their names 
should live hereafter. It was virtue's vision ! None but fiends 
could envy it. Year after year confirmed the anticipation ; four 
lovely children blessed their union. Nor was their love the sum- 
mer passion of prosperity ; misfortune proved, afflictions chas- 
tened it. Before the mandate of that mysterious Power, which 
will at times despoil the paths of innocence, to decorate the cha- 
riot of triumphant villany, my client had to bow in silent resig- 
nation. He owed his adversity to the benevolence of his spirit ; 
he "went security for friends ;" those friends deceived him, and 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 69 

he was obliged to seek in other lands, that safe asylum which 
his own denied him. He was glad to accept an offer of profes- 
sional business in Scotland during his temporary embarrassment. 
With a conjugal devotion, Mrs. Guthrie accompanied him ; and 
in her smile the soil of a stranger was a home, the sorrows of 
adversity were dear to him. — During their residence in Scotland, 
a period of about a year, you will find they lived as they had 
done in Ireland, and as they continued to do until this calamitous 
occurrence, in a state of uninterrupted happiness. You shall 
hear, most satisfactorily, that their domestic life was unsullied 
and undisturbed. Happy at home, happy in a husband's love, 
happy in her parents' fondness, happy in the children she had 
nursed, Mrs. Guthrie carried into every circle — and there was 
no circle in which her society was not courted — that cheerful- 
ness which never was a companion of guilt, or a stranger to in- 
nocence. My client saw her the pride of his family, the favour- 
ite of his friends, — at once the organ and ornament of his hap- 
piness. His ambition awoke, his industry redoubled ; and that 
fortune, which though for a season it may frown, never totally 
abandons probity and virtue, had begun to smile on him. He 
was beginning to rise in the ranks of his competitors, and rising 
with such a character, that emulation itself rather rejoiced than 
envied. It was at this crisis, in this, the noon of his happiness, 
and day-spring of his fortune, that, to the ruin of both, the De- 
fendant became acquainted with his family. With the serpent's 
wile, and the serpent's wickedness, he stole into the Eden of do- 
mestic life, poisoning all that was pure, polluting all that was 
lovely, defying God, destroying man ; a demon in the disguise of 
virtue, a herald of hell in the paradise of innocence. His name. 
Gentlemen, is William Peter Baker Dunstanville Ster\e ; 
one would think he had epithets enough, without adding to 
them the title of Adallerer. Of his character I know but little, 
and I am sorry I know so much. If I am instructed rightly, he 
is one of those vain and vapid coxcombs, whose vices tinge the 
frivolity of their follies with something of a more odious 
character than ridicule — with just head enough to contrive 
crime, but not heart enough to feci for its consequences ; one of 
those fashionable insects, that folly has painted, and fortune 
plumed, for the annoyance of our atmosphere ; dangerous alike 
in their torpidity and their animation ; infesting where they fly, 



70 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

and poisoning where they repose. It was through the introduc- 
tion of Mr. Fallon, the son of a most respectable lady, then resi- 
dent in Temple-street, and a near relative of Mr. Guthrie, that 
the defendant and this unfortunate woman first became acquaint- 
ed : to such an introduction the shadow of a suspicion could not 
possibly attach. Occupied himself in his professional pursuits, 
my client had little leisure for the amusement of society ; how- 
ever, to the protection of Mrs. Fallon, her son, and daughters, 
moving in the first circles, unstained by any possible imputa- 
tion, he without hesitation intrusted all that was dear to him. 
No suspicion could be awakened as to any man to whom such a 
female as Mrs. Fallon permitted an intimacy with her daughters: 
while at her house then, and at the parties which it originated, 
the defendant and Mrs. Guthrie had frequent opportunities of 
meeting. Who could have suspected, that, under the very roof 
of virtue, in the presence of a venerable and respected matron, 
and of that innocent family, whom she had reared up in the sun- 
shine of her example, the most abandoned profligate could have 
plotted his iniquities ! Who would not rather suppose, that, in 
the rebuke of such a presence, guilt would have torn away the 
garland from its brow, and blushed itself into virtue. But the 
depravity of this man was of no common dye ; the asylum of 
innocence was selected only as the sanctuary of his crimes ; and 
the pure and the spotless chosen as his associates, because they 
would be more unsuspected subsidiaries to his wickedness. Nor 
were his manner and his language less suited than his society 
to the concealment of his objects. If you believed himself, the 
sight of suffering affected his nerves ; the bare mention of immo- 
rality smote upon his conscience ; an intercourse with the conti- 
nental courts had refined his mind into a painful sensibility to 
the barbarisms of Ireland 1 and yet an internal tenderness to- 
wards his native land so irresistibly impelled him to improve it 
by his residence, that he was a hapless victim to the excess of 
his feelings ! — the exquisiteness of his polish ! — and the excellence 
of his patriotism ! His English estates, he said, amounted to about 
10,000/. a year; and he retained in Ireland only a trifling 3000/. 
more, as a kind of trust for the necessities of its inhabitants ! — 
In short, according to his own description, he was in religion a 
saint, and in morals a stoic — a sort of wandering philanthropist ! 
making, like the Sterne, who, he confessed, had the honour of his 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 71 

name and his connection, a Se?itimental Journey in search of ob- 
jects over whom his heart might weep, and his sensibihty expand 
itself! How happy it is, that, of the philosophic profligate only 
retaining the vices and the name, his rashness has led to the 
arrest of crimes, which he had all his turpitude to commit, with- 
out any of his talents to embellish. 

It was by arts such as I have alluded to — by pretending the 
most strict morality, the most sensitive honour, the most high and 
undeviating principles of virtue, — that the defendant banished 
every suspicion of his designs. As far as appearances went, he 
was exactly what he described himself His pretensions to mo- 
rals he supported by the most reserved and respectful behaviour: 
his hand was lavish in the distribution of his charities ; and a 
splendid equipage, a numerous retinue, a system of the most 
profuse and prodigal expenditure, left no doubt as to the reality 
of his fortune. Thus circumstanced, he found an easy admit- 
tance to the house of Mrs. Fallon, and there he had many oppor- 
tunities of seeing Mrs. Guthrie ; for between his family and that 
of so respectable a relative as Mrs. Fallon, my client had much 
anxiety to increase the connection. They visited together some 
of the public amusements; they partook of some of the fetes 
in the neighbourhood of the metropolis ; but upon every occasion 
Mrs. Guthrie was accompanied by her own mother, and by the 
respectable females of Mrs. Fallon's family. I say upon every 
occasion : and I challenge them to produce one single instance of 
those innocent excursions, upon which the slanders of an inter- 
ested calumny have been let loose, in which this unfortunate 
lady was not matronised by her female relatives, and those some 
of the most spotless characters in society. Between Mr. Guthrie 
and the defendant, the acquaintance was but slight. Upon one 
occasion alone they dined together ; it was at the house of the 
plaintiff's father-in-law ; and that you may have some illustration 
of the defendant's character, I shall briefly instance his conduct 
dt this dinner. On being introduced to Mr. Warren, he apolo- 
gized for any deficiency of etiquette in his visit, declaring that 
he had been seriously occupied in arranging the affairs of his la- 
mented father, who, though tenant for life, had contracted debts 
to an enormous amount. He had already paid upwards of 
10,000/. which honour and not law compelled him to discharge; 
as, sweet soul ! he could not bear that any one should suffer un- 



72 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

justly by his family ! His subsequent conduct was quite con- 
sistent with this hypocritical preamble: at dinner, he sat at a dis- 
tance from Mrs. Guthrie ; expatiated to her husband upon mat- 
ters of morality ; entering into a high-flown panegyric on the 
virtues of domestic life, and the comforts of connubial happiness. 
In short, had there been any idea of jealousy, his manner would 
have banished it ; and the mind must have been worse than scep- 
tical, which would refuse its credence to his surface morality. 
Gracious God! when the heart once admits guilt as its associate, 
how every natural emotion flies before it ! Surely, surely, here 
was a scene to reclaim, if it were possible, this remorseless defend- 
ant. Admitted to her father's table under the shield of hospital- 
ity, he saw a young and lovely female surrounded by her parents, 
her husband, and her children ; the prop of those parents' age ; 
the idol of that husband's love ; the anchor of those children's 
helplessness ; the sacred orb of their domestic circle ; giving their 
smile its light, and their bliss its being ; robbed of whose beams, 
the little lucid world of their home must become chill, uncheered, 
and colourless for ever. He saw them happy, he saw them uni- 
ted ; blessed with peace, and purity, and profusion ; throbbing 
with sympathy and throned in love ; depicting the innocence of 
infancy, and the joys of manhood before the venerable eye of age, 
as if to soften the farewell of one world by the pure and pictured 
anticipation of a better. Yet, even there, hid in the very sun-beam 
of that happiness, the demon of its destined desolation lurked. 
Just Heaven ! of what materials was that heart composed, which 
could meditate coolly on the murder of such enjoyments — which 
innocence could not soften, nor peace propitiate, nor hospitality 
appease ; but which, in the very beam and bosom of its benefac- 
tion, warmed and excited itself into a more vigorous venom? 
Was there no sympathy in the scene 1 Was there no remorse at 
the crime ? Was there no horror at its consequences ? 

" Were honour, virtue, conscience, all exiled ! 

Was there no pity, no relenting ruth, 

To show their parents fondling o'er their child, 

Then paint the ruined pair, and their distraction wild !" Burns. 

No! no! He was at that instant planning their destruction; and 
even within four short days he deliberately reduced those parents 
to childlessness, that husband to widowhood, those smiling infants 
to anticipate orphanage, and that peaceful, hospitable, confiding 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 73 

family, to helpless, hopeless, irremediable ruin ! — Upon the first 
day of the ensuing July, INIr. Guthrie was to dine with the 
Connaught bar, at the hotel of Portobello. It is a custom, I 
am told, with the gentlemen of that association, to dine to- 
gether previous to the circuit ; of course my client could not 
have decorously absented himself Mrs. Guthrie appeared a 
little feverish, and he requested that, on his retiring, she would 
compose herself to rest ; she promised him she would ; and when 
he departed, somewhat abruptly, to put some letters in the post- 
office, she exclaimed, " What ! John, are you going to leave me 
thus ?" He returned, and she kissed him. They seldom parted, 
even for any time, without that token of affection. I am thus 
minute, gentlemen, that you may see, up to the last moment, what 
little cause the husband had for suspicion, and how impossible it 
was for him to foresee a perfidy, which nothing short of infatua- 
tion could have produced. He proceeded to his companions 
with no other regret than that necessity, for a moment, forced 
him from a home, which the smile of affection had never ceased 
to endear to him. After a day, however, passed, as such a day 
might have been supposed to pass, in the flow of soul, and the 
philosophy of pleasure, he returned home to share his happiness 
with her, without whom no happiness ever had been perfect. 
Alas ! he was never to behold her more ! Imagine, if you can, 
the phrenzy of his astonishment, in being informed by Mrs. Por- 
ter, the daughter of the former landlady, that about two hours 
before, she had attended Mrs. Guthrie to a confectioner's shop, 
that a carriage had drawn up at the corner of the street, into 
which a gentleman, whom she recognized to be a Mr. Sterne, 
had handed her, and they instantly departed. I must tell you, 
there is every reason to believe, that this woman was the confidant 
of the conspiracy. What a pity that the object of that guilty 
confidence had not something of humanity ; that as a female, she 
did not feel for the character of her sex ; that, as a mother, she 
did not mourn over the sorrows of a helpless family ! What pangs 
might she not have spared 1 

My client could hear no more ; even at the dead of night he 
rushed into the street, as if in its own dark hour he could dis- 
cover guilt's recesses. In vain did he awake the peaceful family 
of the horror-struck Mrs. Fallon ; in vain, with the parents of the 
miserable fugitive, did he mingle the tears of an impotent dis- 
K 



74 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

traction ; in vain, a miserable maniac, did he traverse the silent 
streets of the metropolis, affrighting virtue from its slumber with 
the spectre of its own ruin. I will not harrow you with its heart- 
rending recital. But imagine you see him, when the day had 
dawned, returning wretched to his deserted dwelling, seeing in 
every chamber a memorial of his loss, and hearing every tongue- 
less object eloquent of his woe. Imagine you see him, in the 
reverie of his grief, trying to persuade himself it was all a vision, 
and awakened only to the horrid truth by his helpless children 
asking for their mother! 

Gentlemen, this is not a picture of the fancy ; it literally oc- 
curred ; there is something less of romance in the reflection 
which his children awakened in the mind of their afflicted father; 
he ordered that they should be immediately habited in mourning. 
How rational sometimes are the ravings of insanity ! For all the 
purposes of maternal life, poor innocents, they have no mother ! 
her tongue no more can teach, her hand no more can tend them: 
for them there is not " speculation in her eyes ;" to them her life 
is something worse than death ; as if the awful grave had yawned 
her forth, she moves before them shrouded all in sin, the guilty 
burden of its peaceless sepulchre. Better, far better, their little 
feet had followed in her funeral, than the hour which taught her 
value, should reveal her vice, — mourning her loss, they might 
have blessed her memory ; and shame need not have rolled its 
fires into the fountain of their sorrow. 

As soon as his reason had become sufficiently collected, Mr. 
Guthrie pursued the fugitives ; he traced them successively to 
Kildare, to Carlow, Waterford, Milfordhaven, on through Wales, 
and finally to Bfracombe, in Devonshire, where the clue was lost. 
1 am glad that, in this route and restlessness of their guilt, as the 
crime they perpetrated was foreign to our soil, they did not make 
that soil the scene of its habitation. I will not follow them 
through this joyless journey, nor brand by my record the uncon- 
scious scene of its pollution. But philosophy never taught, the 
pulpit never enforced, a more imperative morality than the itin- 
erary of that accursed tour promulgates. Oh ! if there be a maid 
or matron in this island, balancing between the alternative of 
virtue and of crime, trembling between the hell of the seducer 
and the adulterer, and the heaven of the parental and the nup- 
tial home, let her pause upon this one, out of the many horrors I 



GUTHRTE V. STERNE. 75 

could depict, — and be converted. I will give you the relation in 
the very words of my brief; I cannot improve upon the simplicity 
of the recital : 

" On the 7th of July they arrived at Milford; the captain of the 
packet dined with them, and was astonished at the magnificence 
of her dress." (Poor wretch ! she was decked and adorned for 
the sacrifice !) The next day they dined alone. Towards evening, 
the housemaid, passing near their chamber, heard Mr. Sterne 
scolding, and apparently heating her ! In a short time after, Mrs. 
Guthrie rushed out of her chamxber into the drawing-room, and 
throwing herself in agony upon the sofa, she exclaimed, Oh! 
rvhat an unhapptj wretch I am ! — Heft my home, where I was happy, 
too happy, seduced hy a man who has deceived me. — My poor 
HUSBAND ! my dear children ! Oh ! if they would even let my little 
William live with me! — it rcouldbe some consolation to my broken 

HEART ! 

" Alas ! nor children more can she behold, 
Nor friends, nor sacred home." 

Well might she lament over her fallen fortunes ! well might 
she mourn over the memory of days when the sun of heaven 
seemed to rise but for her happiness ! well might she recall the 
home she had endeared, the children she had nursed, the hapless 
husband, of whose life she was the pulse ! But one short week 
before, this earth could not reveal a lovelier vision : — Virtue 
blessed, afTection followed, beauty beamed on her ; the light of 
every eye, the charm of every heart, she moved along in cloudless 
chastity, cheered by the song of love, and circled by the splen- 
dours she created ! Behold her now, the loathsome refuse of an 
adulterous bed ; festering in the very infection of her crime ; the 
scoff and scorn of their unmanly, merciless, inhuman author ! 
But thus it ever is with the votaries of guilt ; the birth of their 
crime is the death of their enjoyment ; and the wretch who 
flings his offering on its altar, falls an immediate victim to the 
flame of his devotion. I am glad it is so ; it is a wise, retributive 
dispensation ; it bears the stamp of a preventive Providence. I 
rejoice it is so, in the present instance, first, because this prema- 
ture infliction must insure repentance in the wretched sufferer : 
and next, because, as this adulterous fiend has rather acted on 
the suggestions of his nature than his shape, by rebelling against 
the finest impulse of man, he has made himself an outlaw from 
the sympathies of humanity. — Why should he expect that charity 



76 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

from you, which he would not spare even to the misfortunes he 
had iiiliictcd ? For the honour of the form in which he is dis.- 
guised, I am wilhng to hope he was so blinded by his vice, that 
he did not see the full extent of those misfortunes. If he had 
feelings capable of being touched, it is not to the faded victim of 
her own weakness, and of his wickedness, that I would direct 
them. There is something in her crime which affrights charity 
from its commiseration. 

But, Gentlemen, there is one, over whom pity may mourn, — 
for he is wretched ; and mourn without a blush, — for he is guilt- 
less. How shall I depict to you the deserted husband ? To every 
other object in this catalogue of calamity there is one stain at- 
tached which checks compassion. — But here — oh ! if ever there 
was a man amiable, it was that man — oh ! if ever there was a 
husband fond, it was that husband. His hope, his joy, his ambi- 
tion was domestic, his toils were forgotten in the affections of his 
home ; and amid every adverse variety of fortune, hope pointed to 
his children, — and he was comforted. By this vile act that hope 
is blasted, that house is a desert, those children are parentless ! 
In vain do they look to their surviving parent : his heart is broken, 
his mind is in ruins : his very form is fading from the earth. He 
had one consolation, an aged mother, on whose life the remnant 
of his fortunes hung, and on v^^hose protection of his children his 
remaining prospects rested ; even that is over ; she could not sur- 
vive his shame, she never raised her head, she became hearsed in 
his misfortune ; — he has followed her funeral. If this be not the 
climax of human misery, tell me in what does human misery con- 
sist ? Wife, parent, fortune, prospects, happiness, — all gone at once, 
— and gone for ever ! For my part, when I contemplate this, I do 
not wonder at the impression it has produced on him ; I do not 
wonder at the faded form, the dejected air, the emaciated coun- 
tenance, and all the ruinous and mouldering trophies, by which 
misery has marked its triumph over youth, and health, and hap- 
piness ? I know, that in the hordes of what is called fashionable 
life, there is a sect of philosophers, wonderfully patient of their fel- 
low-creatures' sufferings ; men too insensible to feel for any one, 
or too selfish to feel for others. I trust there is not one amongst 
you who can even hear of such calamities without affliction ; or, 
if there be, I pray that he may never know their import by expe- 
rience ; that having, in the wilderness of this world, but one dear, 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. T7 

darling object, without whose participation, bliss would be joyless, 
and in whose sympathies sorrow has found a charm ; whose 
smile has cheered his toil, whose love has pillowed his misfortunes, 
whose angel-spirit, guiding him through danger, and darkness, and 
despair, amid the world's frown and the friend's perfidy, was more 
than friend, and world, and all to him ! God forbid, that by a 
villain's wile, or a villain's wickedness, he should be taught how 
to appreciate the wo of others in the dismal solitude of his own. 
Oh, no ! I feel that I address myself to human beings, who, know- 
ing the value of what the world is worth, are capable of appre- 
ciating all that makes it dear to us. 

Observe, however, — lest this crime should want aggravation — 
observe, I beseech you, the period of its accomplishment. My 
client was not so young as that the elasticity of his spirit could 
rebound and bear him above the pressure of the misfortune ; nor 
was he withered by age into a comparative insensibility ; but just 
at that temperate interval of manhood, when passion had ceased 
to play, and reason begins to operate ; when love, gratified, left 
liim nothing to desire ; and fidelity, long tried, left him nothing 
to apprehend : he was just, too, at that period of his professional 
career, when, his patient industry having conquered the ascent, 
he was able to look around him from the height on which he 
rested. For this, welcome had been the day of tumult, and the 
pale midnight lamp succeeding; welcome had been the drudgery 
of form ; welcome the analysis of crime ; welcome the sneer of 
envy, and the scorn of dulness, and all the spurns which " patient 
merit of the unworthy takes." For this he had encountered, per- 
haps, the generous rivalry of genius, perhaps the biting blasts of 
poverty, perhaps the efforts of that deadly slander, which, coiling 
round the cradle of his young ambition, might have sought to 
crush him in its envenomed foldings. 

" Ah ! who can tell how hard it is to climb 

The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar? 

Ah ! who can tell how many a soul sublime 

Hath felt the influence of malignant star. 

And waged with fortune an eternal war ?" 

Can such an injury as this admit of justification ? I think the 
learned counsel will concede it cannot. But it may be palliated. 
Let us see how. — Perhaps the defendant was young and thought- 
less; perhaps unmerited prosperity raised him above the pressure 
of misfortune, and the wild impulses of impetuous passion impel- 



78 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

led him to a purpose at which his experience would have shud- 
dered. Quite tiie contrary. The noon of manhood has almost 
passed over him : and a youth, spent in the recesses of a debtor's 
prison, made him familiar with every form of human misery : he 
saw what misfortune was ; — it did not teach him pity : he saw 
the effects of guilt ; — he spurned the admonition. — Perhaps in the 
solitude of a single life, he had never known the social blessed- 
ness of marriage ; — he has a wife and children ; or, if she be not 
his wife, she is the victim of his crime, and adds another to the 
calender of his seduction. Certain it is, he has little children, 
who think themselves legitimate ; will his advocates defend him, 
by proclaiming their bastardy 1 Certain it is, there is a wretched 
female, his own cousin too, who thinks herself his wife ; will they 
protect him, by proclaiming he has only deceived her into being 
his prostitute ? — Perhaps his crime, as in the celebrated case of 
Hoimrd, immortalized by Lord Erskine, may have found its origin 
in parental cruelty ; it might perhaps have been that in their spring 
of life, when fancy waved her fairy wand around them, till all 
above was sun-shine, and all beneath was flowers ; when to their 
clear and charmed vision this ample world was but a weedless 
garden, where every tint spoke Nature's loveliness, and every 
sound breathed Heaven's melody, and every breeze was but em- 
bodied fragrance ; it might have been that, in this cloudless holi- 
day. Love wove his roseate bondage round them, till their young 
hearts so grew together, a separate existence ceased, and life 
itself became a sweet identity ; it might have been that, envious 
of this paradise, some worse than demon tore them from each 
other to pine for years in absence, and at length to perish in a 
palliated impiety. Oh ! Gentlemen, in such a case. Justice her- 
self, with her uplifted sword, would call on Mercy to preserve the 
victim. There was no such palliation : — the period of their 
acquaintance was little more than sufiicient for the maturity of 
their crime ; and they dare not libel Love by shielding under its 
soft and sacred name the loathsome revels of an adulterous de- 
pravity. — /;; might have been, the husband's cruelty left a too easy 
inroad for seduction. Will they dare assert it ? Ah ! too well 
they know he would not let " the winds of heaven visit her face 
too roughly." Monstrous as it is, I have heard, indeed, that they 
mean to rest upon an opposite palHation : I have heard it ru- 
moured, that they mean to rest the wife's infidelity upon the 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 79 

husband's fondness. I know that guilt, in its conception mean, 
and in its commission tremulous, is, in its exposure, desperate and 
audacious. I know that, in the fugitive panic of its retreat it 
will stop to fling its Parthian poisons upon the justice that pur- 
sues it. But I do hope, bad and abandoned, and hopeless as their 
cause is, — I do hope, for the name of human nature, that I have 
been deceived in the rumours of this unnatural defence. Merci- 
ful God ! is it in the presence of this venerable Court, is it in the 
hearing of this virtuous jury, is it in the zenith of an enlightened 
age, that I am to be told, because female tenderness was not 
watched with worse than Spanish vigilance, and harassed with 
worse than eastern severity ; because the marriage-contract is 
not converted into the curse of incarceration ; because woman is 
allowed the dignity of a human soul, and man does not degrade 
himself into a human monster; because the vow of endearment 
is not made the vehicle of deception, and the altar's pledge 
is not become the passport of a barbarous perjury ; and that too 
in a land of courage and chivalry, where the female form has been 
held as a patent direct from the Divinity, bearing in its chaste 
and charmed helplessness the assurance of its strength, and the 
amulet of its protection : am I to be told, that the demon adul- 
terer is therefore not only to perpetrate his crimes, but to vindi- 
cate himself through the very virtues he has violated ? I can- 
not believe it ; I dismiss the supposition ; it is most " monstrous, 
foul, and unnatural." Suppose that the plaintiff pursued a dif- 
ferent principle ; suppose, that his conduct had been the reverse 
of what it was ; suppose, that in place of being kind, he had been 
cruel to this deluded female ; that he had been her tyrant, not 
her protector ; her jailor, not her husband ; what then might have 
been the defence of the adulterer ? Might he not then say, and 
say with speciousness. " True, I seduced her into crime, but it was 
to save her from cruelty ; true, she is mij adulteress, because he 
was her despot.'''' Happily, Gentlemen, he can say no such thing. 
I have heard it said, too, during the ten months of calumny, for 
which, by every species of legal delay, they have procrastinated 
this trial, that next to the impeachment of the husband's ten- 
derness, they mean to rely on what they libel as the levity of 
their unhappy victim ! I know not by what right any man, but 
above all, a married man, presumes to scrutinize into the con- 
duct of a married female. I know not. Gentlemen, how you 



80 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

would feel, under the consciousness that every coxcomb was at 
liberty to estimate the warmth, or the coolness of your wives, by 
the barometer of his vanity, that he might ascertain precisely the 
prudence of his invasion on their virtue. But I do know, that 
such a defence, coming from such a quarter, would not at all 
surprise me. Poor — unfortunate — fallen female ! How can 
she expect mercy from her destroyer? How can she expect that 
he will revere the characters he was careless of preserving ? How 
can she suppose that, after having made her peace the pander 
to his appetite, he will not make her reputation the victim of his 
avarice ? Such a defence is quite to be expected : knowing him, 
it will not surprise me ; if I know you, it will not avail him. 

Having now shown you, that a crime almost unprecedented 
in this country, is clothed in every aggravation, and robbed of 
every palliative, it is natural you should inquire, what was the 
motive for its commission 1 What do you think it was '? Provi- 
dentially — miraculously, I should have said, for you never could 
have divined — the Defendant has himself disclosed it. What do 
you think it was. Gentlemen 1 Ambition ! But a few days be- 
fore this criminality, in answer to a friend, who rebuked him for 
the almost princely expenditure of his habits — " Oh," says he, 
"never mind; Sterne must do something by which Sterne may 
be known .'" I had heard, indeed, that ambition was a vice, but 
then a vice so equivocal, it verged on virtue; that it was the as- 
piration of a spirit, sometimes perhaps appalling, always magnifi- 
cent ; that though its grasp might be fate, and its flight might be 
famine, still it reposed on earth's pinnacle, and played in heaven's 
lightnings ; that though it might fall in ruins, it arose in fire, and 
was withal so splendid, that even the horrors of that fall became 
immerged and mitigated in the beauties of that aberration ! But 
here is an ambition ! — base and barbarous and illegitimate, with 
all the grossness of the vice, with none of the grandeur of the vir- 
tue ; a mean, muffled, dastard incendiary, who, in the silence of 
sleep and the shades of midnight, steals his Ephesian torch into 
the fane, which it was virtue to adore, and worse than sacrilege 
to have violated ! 

Gentlemen, my part is done ; yours is about to commence. You 
have heard this crime — its origin, its progress, its aggravations, 
its novelty amongst us. Go and tell your children and your coun- 
try, whether or not it is to be made a precedent Oh ! how 



GUTHRIE V. STERNE. 81 

awful Is your responsibility ! I do not doubt that you will discharge 
yourselves of it as becomes your characters. I am sure, indeed, 
that you will mourn with me over the almost solitary defect in 
our otherwise matchless system of jurisprudence, which leaves 
the perpetrators of such an injury as this, subject to no amerce- 
ment but that of money. I think you will lament the failure 
of the great Cicero of our age, to bring such an offence within 
the cognizance of a criminal jurisdiction ; it was a subject suited 
to his legislative mind, worthy of his feeling heart, worthy of his 
immortal eloquence, t cannot, my Lord, even remotely allude to 
Lord Erskine, without gratifying myself by saying of him, that, 
by the rare union of all that was learned in law with all that was 
lucid in eloquence, by the singular combination of all that was pure 
in morals with all that was profound in wisdom ; he has stamped 
upon every action of his life the blended authority of a great mind 
and an unquestionable conviction. I think, Gentlemen, you will 
regret the failure of such a man in such an object. The merciless 
murderer may have manliness to plead; the highway robber 
may have want to palUate ; yet they both are objects of criminal 
infliction : but the murderer of connubial bliss, who commits his 
crime in secrecy ; — the robber of domestic joys, whose very 
wealth, as in this case, may be his instrument ; — he is suffered to 
calculate on the infernal fame which a superfluous and unfelt 
expenditure may purchase. The law, however, is so, and we 
must only adopt the remedy it affords us. In your adjudication of 
that remedy, I do not ask too much, when I ask the full extent of 
your capability; how poor, even so, is the wretched remuneration 
for an injury which nothing can repair, — for a loss which nothing 
can alleviate ? Do you think that a mine could recompense my 
client for the forfeiture of her who was dearer than life to him ? 

" Oh, had she been but true, 
Though heaven had made him such another world, 
Of one entire and perfect chrysolite 
He'd not exchange her for it 1" 

I put it to any of you, what would you take to stand in his situa- 
tion? What would you take to have your ^tospects blasted, your 
profession despoiled, youf peace ruined, your bed profaned, your 
parents heart-broken, your children parentless ? Believe, Gen- 
tlemen, if it were not for those children, he would not come here 
to day to seek such remuneration ; if it were not that, by your 
verdict, you may prevent those Uttle innocent defrauded wretches 
L 



82 GUTHRIE v. STERNE. 

from becoming wandering beggars, as well as orphans on the face 
of this earth. Oh, I know I need not ask this verdict from your 
mercy; I need not extort it from your compassion; I will receive it 
from your justice. I do conjure you, not as fathers, but as hus- 
bands : — not as husbands but as citizens : — not as citizens, but as 
men : — not as men, but as Christians : — by all your obligations, 
public, private, moral, and religious ; by the hearth profaned ; by 
the home desolated ; by the canonsof the living God foully spurned ; 
— save, oh ! save your fire-sides from the contagion, your country 
from the crime, and perhaps thousands, yet unborn, from the 
shame, and sin, and sorrow of this example ! 



I 



SPEECH OF MR. PHILLIPS 



IN THE CASE OP 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 
DELIVERED IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, GAL WAY. 



My Lords and Gentlemen, 

I AM instructed, as of counsel for the Plaintiff, to state to you the 
circumstances in which this action has originated. It is a source 
to me, I will confess it, of much personal embarrassment. Fee- 
bly, indeed, can I attempt to convey to you, the feelings with 
which a perusal of this brief has affected me ; painful to you 
must be my inefficient transcript — painful to all who have the 
common feelings of country or of kind, must be this calamitous 
compendium of all that degrades our individual nature, and of 
all that has, for many an age of sorrow, perpetuated a curse 
upon our national character. It is, perhaps, the misery of this 
profession, that every hour our vision may be blasted by some 
withering crime, and our hearts wrung with some agonizing re- 
cital ; there is no frightful form of vice, or no disgusting phantom 
of infirmity, which guilt does not array in spectral train before 
us. Horrible is the assemblage ! humiliating the application ! 
but thank God, even amid those very scenes of disgrace and of de- 
basement, occasions oft arise for the redemption of our dignity ; 
occasions, on which the virtues breathed into us, by heavenly 
inspiration, walk abroad in the divinity of. their exertion; before 
whose beam the wintry robe falls from the form of virtue, and 
all the midnight images of horror vanish into nothing. Joyfully 
and piously do I recognise such an occasion ; gladly do I invoke 
you to the generous participation ; yes, Gentlemen, though you 
must prepare to hear much that degrades our nature, much that 
distracts our country — though all that oppression could devise 
against poor — though all that persecution could inflict upon the 
feeble — though all that vice could wield against the pious — 

83 



84 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

though all that the venom of a venal turpitude could pour upon 
the patriot, must with their alternate apparition afflict, affright, 
and humiliate you, still do I hope, that over this charnel-house 
of crime — over this very sepulchre, where corruption sits en- 
throned upon the merit it has murdered, that voice is at length 
about to be heard, at which the martyred victim will arise to 
vindicate the ways of Providence, and prove that even in its 
worst adversity there is a might and immortality in virtue. 

The Plaintiff, Gentlemen, you have heard, is the Rev. Corne- 
lius O'MuUan ; he is a clergyman of the church of Rome, and 
became invested with that venerable appellation, so far back as 
September, 1804. It is a title which you know, in this country, 
no rank ennobles, no treasure enriches, no establishment supports; 
its possessor stands undisguised by any rag of this world's de- 
coration, resting all temporal, all eternal hope upon his toil, his 
talents, his attainments, and his piety — doubtless, after all, the 
highest honours, as well as the most imperishable treasures of 
the man of God. Year after year passed over my client, and 
each anniversary only gave him an additional title to these qua- 
lifications. His precept was but the handmaid to his practice ; 
the sceptic heard him, and was convinced ; the ignorant attended 
him, and were taught; he smoothed the death- bed of too heed- 
less wealth ; he rocked the cradle of the infant charity ; oh, no 
wonder he walked in the sunshine of the public eye, no wonder 
he toiled through the pressure of the public benediction. This 
is not an idle declamation; such was the result his ministry 
produced, that within five years from the date of its commence- 
ment, nearly 2000/. of voluntary subscription enlarged the tem- 
ple where such precepts were taught, and such piety exemplified. 
Such was the situation of Mr. O'MuUan, when a dissolution of 
parliament took place, and an unexpected contest for the repre- 
sentation of Derry, threw that county into unusual commotion. 
One of the candidates was of the Ponsonby family — a family 
devoted to the interests, and dear to the heart of Ireland ; he 
naturally thought that his parliamentary conduct entitled him 
to the vote of every Catholic in the land; and so it did, not only 
of every Catholic but of every Christian who preferred the dif- 
fusion of the Gospel to the ascendancy of a sect, and loved the 
principles of the constitution better than the pretensions of a 
party. Perhaps you will think with me, that there is a sort of 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 85 

posthumous interest thrown about that event, when I tell you, 
that the candidate on that occasion was the lamented Hero over 
whose tomb the tears, not only of Ireland, but of Europe, have 
been so lately shed ; he who, mid the blossoms of the world's 
chivalry, died conquering a deathless name upon the field of 
Waterloo. He applied to Mr. O'Mullan for his interest, and 
that interest was cheerfully given, the concurrence of his bishop 
having been previously obtained. Mr. Ponsonby succeeded ; 
and a dinner, to which all parties were invited, and from which 
all party spirit was expected to absent itself, was given to com- 
memorate one common triumph — the purity and the privileges 
of election. In other countries, such an expectation might be 
natural ; the exercise of a noble constitutional privilege, the 
triumph of a great popular cause, might not unaptly expand it- 
self in the intercourse of the board, and unite all hearts in the 
natural bond of festive commemoration. But, alas. Gentlemen, 
in this unhappy land, such has been the result, whether of our 
faults, our follies, or our misfortunes, that a detestable disunion 
converts the very balm of the bowl into poison, commissioning its 
vile and happy offspring, to turn even our festivity into famine. 
My chent was at this dinner ; it was not to be endured that a 
Catholic should pollute with his presence the civic festivities of 
the loyal Londonderry ! such an intrusion, even the acknowledged 
sanctity of his character could not excuse ; it became necessary 
to insult him. There is a toast, which, perhaps, few in this united 
country are in the habit of hearing, but it is the invariable 
v^ratchword of the Orange orgies ; it is briefly entitled " The 
glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good King 
William." I have no doubt the simplicity of your understandings 
is puzzled how to discover any offence in the commemoration of 
the Revolution Hero. The loyalists of Derry are more wise in 
their generation. There, when some Bacchanalian bigots 
wish to avert the intrusive visitations of their owm memory, they 
commence by violating the memory of King William.* Those 

* This loyal toast, handed down by Orange tradition, is literally as follows, — 
we give it for the edification of the sister island. 

" The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of the great and good KingWilliam, 
who saved us from Pope and Popery, James and slavery, brass money and wooden 
shoes ; here is bad luck to the Pope, and a hempen rope to all Papists ." 

It is drank kneeling, if they cannot stand, nine times nine, amid various mys- 
teries which none but the elect can comprehend. 



86 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

who happen to have shoes or silver in their fraternity — no very 
usual occurrence — thank His Majesty that the shoes are not 
wooden, and that the silver is not brass, a commodity, by the bye, 
of which any legacy would have been quite superfluous. The 
Pope comes in for a pious benediction ; and the toast concludes 
with a patriotic wish, for all his persuasion, by the consummation 
of which there can be no doubt, the hempen manufactures of 
this country would experience a very considerable consumption. 
Such, Gentlemen, is the enlightened, and liberal, and social sen- 
timent of which the lirst sentence, all that is usually given, forms 
the suggestion. I must not omit that it is generally taken stand- 
ing, always providing it be in the power of the company. This 
toast was pointedly given to insult Mr. O'Mullan. Naturally 
averse to any altercation, his most obvious course was to quit 
the company, and this he did immediately. He was, however, 
as immediately recalled by an intimation, that the Catholic 
question, and might its claims be considered justly and liberally, 
had been toasted as a peace-offering by Sir George Hill, the City 
Recorder. My client had no gall in his disposition ; he at once 
clasped to his heart the friendly overture, and in such phrase as 
his simplicity supplied, poured forth the gratitude of that heart 
to the liberal Recor(?er. Poor O'Mullan had the wisdom to 
imagine that the politician's compliment was the man's conviction, 
and that a table toast was the certain prelude to a parliamentary 
suffrage. Despising all experience, he applied the adage, Ccelum 
nofi animum midafit qui trans mare currnnt, to the Irish patriot. 
I need not paint to you the consternation of Sir George, at so 
unusual and so unparliamentary a construction. He indignantly 
disclaimed the intention imputed to him, denied and deprecated 
the unfashionable inference, and acting on the broad scale of an 
impartial policy, gave to one party the weight of his vote, and 
to the other, the (no doubt in his opinion) equally valuable ac- 
quisition of his eloquence ; by the way, no unusual compromise 
amongst modern politicians. 

The proceedings of this dinner soon became public. Sir George 
you may be sure, was little in love with his notoriety. However, 
Gentlemen, the sufferings of the powerful are seldom without 
sympathy ; if they receive not the solace of the disinterested and 
the sincere, they are at least sure to find a substitute in the mi- 
serable professions of an interested hypocrisy. Who could ima- 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 87 

gine, that Sir George, of all men, was to drink from the spring 
of Catholic consolation ? yet so it happened. Two men of that 
communion had the hardihood and the servility to frame an 
address to him, reflecting upon the pastor, who was its pride and 
its ornament. This address, with the most obnoxious commenta- 
ries, was instantly published by the Derry Journalist, who from 
that hour, down to the period of his ruin, has never ceased to 
persecute my client, with all that the most deliberate falsehood 
could invent, and all that the most infuriate bigotry could perpe- 
trate. This journal, I may as well now describe to you : it is one 
of the numerous publications which the misfortunes of this un- 
happy land have generated, and which has grown into consider- 
able affluence by the sad contributions of the public calamity. 
There is not a provincial village in Ireland which some such 
official fiend does not infest, fabricating a gazette of fraud and 
falsehood, upon all wrho presume to advocate her interests, or 
uphold the ancient religion of her people ; — the worst foes of 
government, under pretence of giving it assistance ; the deadliest 
enemies to the Irish name, under the mockery of supporting its 
character ; the most licentious, irreligious, illiterate banditti 
that ever polluted the fair fields of Hterature, under the spoliated 
banner of the press. Bloated with the public spoil, and blooded 
in the chase of character, no abilities can arrest, no piety can awe ; 
no misfortune affect, no benevolence conciliate them ; the repu- 
tation of the living, and the memory of the dead, are equally 
plundered in their desolating progress ; even the awful sepulchre 
affords not an asylum to their selected victim. Human Hyenas ! 
they will rush into the sacred receptacle of death, gorging their 
ravenous and brutal rapine amid the memorials of our last in- 
firmity ! Such is a too true picture of what, I hope unautho- 
risedly, misnames itself the ministerial press of Ireland. Amid 
that polluted press, it is for you to say, whether Tlie Londonderry 
Journal stands on an infamous elevation. When this address was 
published in the name of the Catholics, that calumniated body, 
as was naturally to be expected, became universally indignant. 

You may remember. Gentlemen, amongst the many expedients 
resorted to by Ireland, for the recovery of her rights, after she 
had knelt session after session at the bar of the legislature, co- 
vered with the wounds of glory, and ■praying redempti(m from the 
chains that rewarded them ; — you may remember, I say, amongst 



88 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

many vain expedients of supplication and remonstrance, her Ca- 
tholic population delegated a board to consult on their affairs, 
and forward their petition. Of that body, fashionable as the 
topic has now become, far be it from me to speak with disrespect. 
It contained much talent, much integrity ; and it exhibited what 
must ever be to me an interesting spectacle — a great body of my 
fellow men, and fellow christians, claiming admission into that 
constitution which their ancestors had achieved by their valour, 
and to which they were entitled as their inheritance. This is 
no time, this is no place for the discussion of that question ; but 
since it does force itself incidentally upon me, I will say, that 
as on the one hand, I cannot fancy a despotism more impious, or 
more inhuman, than the political abasement here, on account of 
that faith by which men hope to win a happy eternity here- 
after ; so on the other, I cannot fancy a vision in its aspect more 

DIVINE THAN THE ETERNAL CROSS, RED WITH THE MARTYR'S BLOOD, 
AND RADIANT WITH THE PILGRIM'S HOPE, REARED BY THE PATRIOT 
AND THE CHRISTIAN HAND HIGH IN THE VAN OF UNIVERSAL LIBERTY. 

Of this board the two volifnteer framers of the address happened 
to be members. The body who deputed them, instantly assem- 
bled and declared their delegation void. You would suppose, 
Gentlemen, that after this decisive public brand of reprobation, 
those officious meddlers would have avoided its recurrence, by 
retiring from scenes for which nature and education had totally 
unfittecl them. Far, however, from acting under any sense of 
shame, those excluded outcasts even summoned a meeting to ap- 
peal from the sentence the public opinion had pronounced on 
them. The meeting assembled, and after almost the day's de- 
liberation on their conduct, the former sentence was unanimously 
confirmed. The men did not deem it prudent to attend them- 
selves ; but at a late hour, when the business was concluded, 
when the resolutions had passed, when the chair was vacated, 
when the multitude was dispersing, they attempted, with some 
Orange followers, to obtrude into the chapel, which in large ci- 
ties, such as Derry, is the usual place of meeting. An angry 
spirit arose among the people. Mr. O'MuUan, as was his duty, 
locked the doors to preserve the house of God from profanation, 
and addressed the crowd in such terms as induced them to re- 
pair peaceably to their respective habitations. I need not paint 
to you the bitter emotions with which these deservedly disap- 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 89 

pointed men were agitated. All hell was at work within them, 
and a conspiracy was hatched against the peace of my client, 
the vilest, the foulest, the most infernal that ever vice devised, 
or demons executed. Restrained from exciting a riot by his in- 
terference, they actually swore a riot against him, prosecuted 
him to conviction, worked on the decaying intellect of his bishop 
to desert him, and amid the savage war-whoop of this slanderous 
Journal, all along inflaming the public mind by libels the most 
atrocious, finally flung this poor, religious, unoffending priest, into 
a damp and desolate dungeon, where the very iron that bound, 
had more of humanity than the despots that surrounded him. I 
am told, they triumph much in this conviction. I seek not to 
impugn the verdict of that jury ; I have no doubt they acted 
conscientiously. It weighs not with me that every member of my 
client's creed was carefully excluded from that jury — no doubt 
they acted conscienlioiisly. It weighs not with me that every man 
impannelled on the trial of the priest, was exclusively Protestant, 
and that, too, in a city so prejudiced, that not long ago, by their 
Corporation law, no Catholic dare breathe the air of heaven 
within its walls — no doubt they acted cofiscientiously. It weighs 
not with me, that not three days previously, one of that jury 
was heard publicly to declare, he wished he could persecute the 
Papist to his death — no doubt they acted conscie7itiotisly. It weighs 
not with me, that the public mind had been so inflamed by the 
exasperation of this libeller, that an impartial trial was utterly 
impossible. Let them enjoy their triumph. But for myself, 
knowing him as I do, here in the teeth of that conviction, I de- 
clare it, I would rather be that man, so aspersed, so imprisoned, 
so persecuted, and have his co7iscioustiess, than stand the high- 
est of the courtliest rabble that ever crouched before the foot of 
power, or fed upon the people-plundered alms of despotism. 
Oh, of short duration is such demoniac triumph. Oh, blind and 
groundless is the hope of vice, imagining its victory can be more 
than for the moment. This very day I hope will prove, that if 
virtue suffers, it is but for a season ; and that sooner or later, 
their patience tried, and their purity testified, prosperity will 
crown the interests of probity and worth. 

Perhaps you imagine, Gentlemen, that his person imprisoned, 
his profession gone, his prospects ruined, and what he held dearer 
than ail, his character defamed ; the malice of his enemies might 
M 



90 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

have rested from persecution. " Thus bad begins, but worse 
remains behind." Attend, I beseech you, to what now follows, 
because I have come, in order, to the particular libel, which we 
have selected from the innumerable calumnies of this Journal, 
and to which we call your peculiar consideration. Business of 
moment, to the nature of which I shall feel it my duty presently 
to advert, called Mr. O'MuUan to the metropolis. Through the 
libels of the Defendant, he was at this time in disfavour with his 
bishop, and a rumour had gone abroad, that he was never again 
to revisit his ancient congregation. The Bishop in the interim 
returned to Derry, and on the Sunday following, went to ofSciate 
at the parish chapel. All ranks crowded tremulously round him ; 
the widow sought her guardian; the orphan his protector ; the 
poor their patron ; the rich their guide ; the ignorant their pas- 
tor ; all, all, with one voice, demanded his recal, by whose absence 
the graces, the charities, the virtues of life, were left orphans in 
their communion. Can you imagine a more interesting spectacle 1 
The human mind never conceived — the human hand never de- 
picted a more instructive or delightful picture. Yet, will you 
believe it ! out of this very circumstance the Defendant fabri- 
cated the most audacious, and, if possible, the most cruel of his 
libels. Hear his words ; — " O'MuUan," says he, " was convicted 
and degraded, for assaulting his own Bishop, and the Recorder 
of Derry, in the parish chapel !" Observe the disgusting mahg- 
nity of the libel — observe the crowded damnation which it ac- 
cumulates on my client — observe all the aggravated crime which 
it embraces. — First, he assaults his venerable Bishop — the great 
ecclesiastical patron, to wdiom he was sworn to be obedient, and 
against whom he never conceived or articulated irreverence. 
Next, he assaults the Recorder of Derry — a privy counsellor, 
the supreme municipal authority of the city. And where does 
he do so ? Gracious God, in the very temple of thy worship ! 
That is, says the inhuman libeller — he a citizen — he a clergyman 
insulted not only the civil but the ecclesiastical authorities, in the 
face of man and in the house of prayer ; trampling contumeliously 
upon all human law, amid the sacred altars, where he believed 
the Almighty witnessed the profanation ! I am so horror-struck 
at this blasphemous and abominable turpitude, I can scarcely 
proceed. What will you say. Gentlemen, when I inform you, 
that at the very time this atrocity was imputed to him, he was 



I 



O^MULLAN V. M'KORKTLL. 91 

in the city of Dublin, at a distance of one hundred and twenty 
miles from the venue of its commission ! But, oh ! when calumny 
once begins its work, how vain are the impediments of time and 
distance ! Before the sirocco of its breath all nature wdthers, and 
age, and sex, and innocence, and station, perish in the unseen, 
but certain desolation of its progress ! Do you wonder O'Mullan 
sunk before these accumulated calumnies 1 do you Avonder the 
feeble were intimidated, the wavering decided, the prejudiced 
confirmed ? He was forsaken by his bishop ; he was denounced 
by his enemies — his very friends fled in consternation from the 
" stricken deer ;" he was banished from the scenes of his child- 
hood, from the endearments of his youth, from the field of his 
fair and honourable ambition. In vain did he resort to strangers 
for subsistence ; on the very wings of the wind, the calumny pre- 
ceded him ; and from that hour to this, a too true apostle, he has 
been " a man of sorrows," "not knowing where to lay his head." 
I will not appeal to your passions ; alas ! how inadequate am I 
to depict his sufferings; you must take them from the evidence. 
I have told you, that at the time of those infernally fabricated 
libels, the Plaintiff was in Dublin, and 1 promised to advert to 
the cause by which his absence was occasioned. 

Observing in the course of his parochial duties, the deplorable, 
I had almost said, the organized ignorance of the Irish peasantry — 
an ignorance zchence all their crimes, and most of their sufferings 
origifiaie : observing also, that there was no publicly established 
literary institution to relieve them, save only the charter schools, 
which tendered learning to the shivering child, as a bounty upon 
apostacy to the faith of his fathers ; he determined, if possible, to 
give them the lore of this world, without offering it as a mortgage 
upon the inheritance of the next. He framed the prospectus of 
a school, for the education of five hundred children, and went to 
the metropolis to obtain subscriptions for the purpose. I need 
not descant upon the great general advantage, or to this country 
the peculiarly patriotic consequences, which the success of such 
a plan must have produced. No doubt, you have all personally 
considered — no doubt, you have all personally experienced, that 
of all the blessings which it has pleased Providence to allow us 
to cultivate, there is not one which breathes a purer fragrance, 
or bears a heavenlier aspect than education. It is a companion 
which no misfortunes can depress, no clime destroy, no enemy 



92 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

alienate, no despotism enslave : at home a friend, abroad an in- 
troduction, in solitude a solace, in society an ornament : it chastens 
vice, it guides virtue, it gives at once a grace and government 
to genius. Without it, what is man ? A splendid slave ! a reason- 
ing savage, vacillating between the dignity of an intelligence de- 
rived from God, and the degradation of passions participated with 
brutes ; and in the accident of their alternate ascendency shud- 
dering at the terrors of an hereafter, or embracing the horrid hope 
of annihilation. What is this wondrous world of his residence 1 

A mighty maze, and all without a plan ; 
a dark and desolate and dreary cavern, without wealth, or orna- 
ment or order. But light up within it the torch of knowledge, 
and how wondrous the transition ! The seasons change, the at- 
mosphere breathes, the landscape lives, earth unfolds its fruits, 
ocean rolls in its magnificence, the heavens display their constel- 
lated canopy, and the grand animated spectacle of nature rises 
revealed before him, its varieties regulated, and its mysteries re- 
solved ! The phenomena which bewilder, the prejudices which 
debase, the superstitions which enslave, vanish before education. 
Like the holy symbol which blazed upon the cloud before the 
hesitating Constantine, if man follow but its precepts, purely, it 
will not only lead him to the victories of this world, but open 
the very portals of Omnipotence for his admission. Cast your 
eye over the monumental map of ancient grandeur, once studded 
with the stars of empire, and the splendours of philosophy. What 
erected the little state of Athens into a powerful commonwealth, 
placing in her hand the sceptre of legislation, and wreathing 
round her brow the imperishable chaplet of literary fame 1 what 
extended Rome, the haunt of banditti, into universal empire ? 
what animated Sparta with that high, unbending, adamantine 
courage, which conquered nature herself, and has fixed her in 
the sight of future ages, a model of pubhc virtue, and a proverb 
of national independence ? What but those wise public institu- 
tions which strengthened their minds with early application, 
informed their infancy with the principles of action, and sent 
them into the world, too vigilant to be deceived by its calms, and 
too vigorous to be shaken by its whirlwinds ? But surely, if there 
be a people in the world, to whom the blessings of education are 
peculiarly applicable, it is the Irish people. Lively, ardent, in- 
telligent, and sensitive ; nearly all their acts spring from impulse, 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 93 

and no matter how that impulse be given, it is immediately 
adopted, and the adoption and the execution are identified. It 
is this principle, if principle it can be called, which renders 
Ireland, alternately, the poorest and the proudest country in the 
world ; now chaining her in the very abyss of crime, now lifting 
her to the very pinnacle of glory ; which in the pooi", proscribed, 
peasant Catholic, crowds the jail and feeds the gibbet ; which in 
the more fortunate, because more educated Protestant, leads 
victory a captive at her car, and holds echo mute at her eloqtience ; 
making a national monopoly of fame, and, as it were, attempting 
to naturalize the achievements of the universe. — In order that 
this libel may want no possible aggravation, the defendant pub- 
lished it when my client was absent on this work of patriotism ; 
he published it when he A'as absent on a work of virtue ; and 
he published it on all the authority of his local knowledge, when 
that very local knowledge must have told him, that it was des- 
titute of the shadow of a foundation. Can you imagine a more 
odious complication of all that is deliberate in malignity, and all 
that is depraved in crime ? I promised. Gentlemen, that I would 
not harrow your hearts, by exposing all that agonizes mine, in 
the contemplation of individual suffering. There is, however, one 
subject, connected with this trial, public in its nature, and uni- 
versal in its interest, which imperiously calls for an exemplary 
verdict ; I mear^ the liberty of the press — a theme which I ap- 
proach with mingled sensations of awe, and agony, and admira- 
tion. Considering all that we too fatally have seen — all that, 
perhaps, too fearfully we may have cause to apprehend, I feel 
myself cling to that residuary safeguard, with an affection no 
temptations can seduce, with a suspicion no anodyne can lull, 
with a fortitude that peril but infuriates. In the direful retro- 
spect of experimental despotism, and the hideous prospect of its 
possible re-animation, I clasp it with the desperation of a wi- 
dowed female, who, in the desolation of her house, and the de- 
struction of her household, hurries the last of her offspring 
through the flames, at once the relic of her joy, the depository 
of her wealth, and the remembrancer of her happiness. It is 
the duty of us all to guard strictly this inestimable privilege — a 
privilege which can never be destroyed, save by the licentious- 
ness of those who wilfully abuse it. No, it is not in the arro- 
gance OF POWER ; no, it is not in the artifices of law; no, it 



94 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

IS NOT IN THE FATUITY OF PRINCES; NO, IT IS NOT IN THE VENALITY 
OF PARLIAMENTS TO CRUSH THIS MIGHTY, THIS MAJESTIC PRIVILEGE ; 
REVILED, IT WILL REMONSTRATE ; MURDERED, IT WILL REVIVE : 
BURIED, IT WILL RE-ASCEND; THE VERY ATTEMPT AT ITS OPPRESSION 
WILL PROVE THE TRUTH OF ITS IMMORTALITY, AND THE ATOM THAT 
PRESUMED TO SPURN, WILL FADE AWAY BEFORE THE TRUMPET OF ITS 

RETRIBUTION ! Man holds it on the same principle that he does 
his soul : the powers of this world cannot prevail against it ; it 
can only perish through its own depravity. What then shall be 
his fate, through whose instrumentality it is sacrificed ! Nay 
more, what shall be his fate, who, intrusted with the guardian- 
ship of its security, becomes the traitorous accessary to its ruin ? 
Nay more, what shall be his fate, by whom its powers, delegated 
for the public good, are converted into the calamities of private 
virtue; against whom, industry denounced, merit undermined, 
morals calumniated, piety aspersed, all through the means con- 
fided for their protection, cry aloud for vengeance ? What shall 
be his fate ? Oh, I would hold such a monster, so protected, so 
sanctified, and so sinning, as I would some demon, who, going 
forth, consecrated, in the name of the Deity, the book of life on 
his lips, and the dagger of death beneath his robe, awaits the 
sigh of piety, as the signal of plunder, and unveins the heart's 
blood of confiding adoration ! — Should not such a case as this re- 
quire some palliation 'i Is there any ? Perhaps the defendant 
might have been misled as to circumstances ? N*, he lived upon 
the spot, and had the best possible information. Do you think 
he believed in the truth of the publication ? No ; he knew 
that in every syllable it was as false as perjury. Do you think 
that an anxiety for the Catholic community might have inflamed 
him against the imaginary dereliction of its advocate 1 No ; 
the very essence of his Journal is prejudice. Do you think that 
in the ardour of liberty he might have venially transgressed its 
boundaries ? No ! in every line he licks the sores, and pampers 
the pestilence of authority. I do not ask you to be stoics in 
your investigation. If you can discover in this libel one motive 
inferentially moral, one single virtue which he has plundered 
and misapplied, give him its benefit. I will not demand such an 
effort of your faith, as to imagine, that his northern constitution 
could, by any miracle, be fired into the admirable but mistaken 
energy of enthusiasm ; — that he could for one moment have felt 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 95 

the inspired phrenzy of those loftier spirits, who, under some 
daring but divine delusion, rise into the arch of an ambition so 
bright, so baneful, yet so beauteous, as leaves the world in wonder 
whether it should admire or mourn — whether it should weep or 
worship ! No ; you will not only search in vain for such a palli- 
ative ; but you will find this publication springing from the most 
odious origin, and disfigured by the most foul accompaniments, 
founded in a bigotry at which hell rejoices, crouching with a 
sycophancy at which flattery blushes, deformed by a falsehood 
at which perjury would hesitate, and to crown the climax of its 
crowded infamies, committed under the sacred shelter of the 
Press ; as if this false, slanderous, sycophantic slave, could not 
assassinate private worth without polluting public privilege ; 
as if he could not sacrifice the character of the pious without 
profaning the protection of the free ; as if he could not poison 
learning, liberty, and religion, unless he filled his chalice from 
the very font whence they might have expected to derive the 
waters of their salvation ! 

Now, Gentlemen, as to the measure of your damages : — You 
are the best judges on that subject ; though, indeed, I have been 
asked, and I heard the question with some surprise, — Why it is 
that we have brought this case at all to be tried before you 1 To 
that I might give at once an unobjectionable answer, namely, 
that the law allowed us. But I will deal much more candidly 
with you. We brought it here ; because it was as far as possible 
from the scene of prejudice ; because no possible partiality could 
exist ; because, in this happy and united county, less of the bi- 
gotry which distracts the rest of Ireland exists, than in any other 
with which we are acquainted; because the nature of the action, 
which we have mercifully brought in place of a criminal prose- 
cution, — the usual course pursued in the present day, at least 
against the independent press of Ireland, — gives them, if they 
have it, the power of proving a justification; and I perceive they 
have emptied half the north here for the purpose. But I can- 
not anticipate an objection, which, no doubt, shall not be made. 
If this habitual libeller should characteristically instruct his 
counsel to hazard it, that learned gentleman is much too wise to 
adopt it, and must know you much too well to insult you by its 
utterance. What damages, then, Gentlemen, can you give ? I 
am content to leave the defendant's crimes altogether out of the 



96 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

question ; but how can you recompense the sufferings of my 
client ? Who shall estimate the cost of priceless reputation — 
that impress which gives this human dross its currency, without 
which we stand despised, debased, depreciated 1 Who shall re- 
pair it injured 1 Wlio can redeem it lost ? Oh ! well and truly 
does the great philosopher of poetry esteem the world's wealth 
as " trash" in the comparison. Without it gold has no value, 
birth no distinction, station no dignity, beauty no charm, age no 
reverence ; or, should I not rather say, without it every treasure 
impoverishes, every grace deforms, every dignity degrades, and 
all the arts, the decorations, and accomplishments of life, stand, 
like the beacon-blaze upon a rock, warning the world that its 
approach is danger — that its contact is death. The wretch 
without it, is under eter?ial quarantine ; — no friend to greet — no 
home to harbour him. The voyage of his life becomes a joyless 
peril ; and in the midst of all ambition can achieve, or avarice 
amass, or rapacity plunder, he tosses on the surge — a buoya?it 
pestilence ! But, Gentlemen, let me not degrade into the selfish- 
ness of individual safety, or individual exposure, this universal 
principle ; it testifies a higher, a more ennobling origin. It is 
this which, consecrating the humble circle of the hearth, will at 
times extend itself to the circumference of the horizon ; which 
nerves the arm of the patriot to save his country ; which lights 
the lamp of the philosopher to amend man ; which, if it does 
not inspire, will yet invigorate the martyr to merit immortality ; 
which, when one world's agony is passed, and the glory of another 
is dawning, will prompt the prophet, even in his chariot of fire, 
and in his vision of heaven, to bequeath to mankind the mantle 
of his memory ! Oh divine, oh delightful legacy of a spotless 
reputation ! Rich is the inheritance it leaves ; pious the exam- 
ple it testifies ; pure, precious, and imperishable, the hope which 
it inspires ! Can you conceive a more atrocious injury than to 
filch from its possessor this inestimable benefit — to rob society 
of its charm, and solitude of its solace ; not only to outlaw life, 
but to attaint death, converting the very grave, the refuge of 
the sufferer, into the gate of infamy and of shame ! I can conceive 
few crimes beyond it. He who plunders my property takes from 
me that which can be repaired by time : but what period can 
repair a ruined reputation ? He who maims my person affects 
that which medicine may remedy : but what herb has sovereignty 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 97 

over the wounds of slander ? He who ridicules my poverty, or 
reproaches my profession, upbraids me with that which industry 
may retrieve, and integrity may purify : but what riches shall 
redeem the lankrupt fame ? what power shall blanch the s^iilUed 
snow of character 1 Can there be an injury more deadly ? Can 
there be a crime more cruel ? It is without remedy — it is with- 
out antidote — it is without evasion! The reptile calumny is 
ever on the watch. From the fascination of its eye no activity 
can escape ; from the venom of its fang no sanity can recover. 
It has no enjoyment but crime ; it has no prey but virtue ; it has 
no interval from the restlessness of its malice, save when, bloated 
with its victims, it grovels to disgorge them at the withered shrine 
where envy idolizes her own infirmities. Under such a visitation 
how dreadful would be the destiny of the virtuous and the good, 
if the providence of our constitution had not given you the power, 
as, I trust, you will have the principle, to bruise the head of the 
serpent, and crush and crumble the altar of its idolatry ! 

And now, Gentlemen, having toiled through this narrative of 
unprovoked and pitiless persecution, I should with pleasure con- 
sign my client to your hands, if a more imperative duty did not 
still remain to me, and that is, to acquit him of every personal 
motive in the prosecution of this action. No ; in the midst of 
slander, and suffering, and severities unexampled, he has had 
no thought, but, that as his enemies evinced how malice could 
persecute, he should exemplify how religion could endure ; that 
if his piety failed to affect the oppressor, his patience might at 
least avail to fortify the afflicted. He was as the rock of 
Scripture before the face of infidelity. The rain of the deluge 
had fallen — it only smoothed his asperities: the wind of the 
tempest beat — it only blanched his brow : the rod, not of pro- 
phecy, but of persecution, smote him ; and the desert, glittering 
with the Gospel dew, became a miracle of the faith it would 
have tempted ! No, Gentlemen ; not selfishly has he appealed 
to this tribunal : but the venerable religion wounded in his 
character, — but the august priesthood vilified in his person, — 
but the doubts of the sceptical, hardened by his acquiescence, — 
but the fidelity of the feeble, hazarded by his forbearance, 
goaded him from the profaned privacy of the cloister into this 
repulsive scene of public accusation. In him this reluctance 
N 



98 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

springs from a most natural and characteristic delicacy : in us 
it would become a most overstrained injustice. No, Gentlemen : 
though with him we must remember morals outraged, religion 
assailed, law violated, the priesthood scandalized, the press 
betrayed, and all the disgusting calendar of abstract evil ; yet 
with him we must not reject the injuries of the individual suf- 
ferer. We must picture to ourselves a young man, partly by 
the self-denial of parental love, partly by the energies of per- 
sonal exertion, struggling into a profession, where, by the pious 
exercise of his talents, he may make the fame, the wealth, the 
flatteries of this world, so many angel heralds to the happiness 
of the next. His precept is a treasure to the poor ; his prac- 
tice, a model to the rich. When he reproves, sorrow seeks his 
presence as a sanctuary ; and in his path of peace, should he 
pause by the death-bed of despairing sin, the soul becomes im- 
paradised in the light of his benediction ! Imagine, Gentlemen, 
you see him thus ; and then, if you can, imagine vice so despe- 
rate as to defraud the world of so fair a vision. Anticipate for 
a moment the melancholy evidence we must too soon adduce to 
you. Behold him, by foul, deliberate, and infamous calumny, 
robbed of the profession he had so struggled to obtain ; swindled 
from the flock he had so laboured to ameliorate ; torn from the 
school where infant virtue vainly mourns an artificial orphan- 
age ; hunted from the home of his youth, from the friends of his 
heart, a hopeless, fortuneless, companionless exile, hanging, in 
some stranger scene, on the precarious pity of the few, whose 
charity might induce their compassion to bestow, what this re- 
morseless slanderer would compel their justice to withhold ! I 
will not pursue this picture ; I will not detain you from the plea- 
sure of your possible compensation ; for oh ! divine is the pleasure 
you are destined to experience; — dearer to your hearts shall be the 
sensation, than to your pride shall be the dignity it will give you. 
What ! though the people will hail the saviours of their pastor : 
what ! though the priesthood will hallow the guardians of their 
brother ; though many a peasant heart will leap at your name, 
and many an infant eye will embalm their fame who restored to 
life, to station, to dignity, to character, the venerable friend who 
taught their trembling tongues to lisp the rudiments of virtue 
and religion, still dearer than all will be the consciousness of the 



O'MULLAN V. M'KORKILL. 99 

deed. Nor, believe me, countrymen, will it rest here. Oh no: 
if there be light in instinct, or truth in revelation, believe me, 
at that awful hour, when you shall await the last inevitable 
verdict, the eye of your hope will not be the less bright, nor the 
agony of your ordeal the more acute, because you shall have, 
by this day's deed, redeemed the Almighty's persecuted apostle 
from the grasp of an insatiate malice — from the fang of a 
worse than Philistine persecution. 



SPEECH OF MR. PHILLIPS 

IN THE CASE OF 

CONNAGHTON v. DILLON: 
DELIVERED IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE OF ROSCOMMON. 



My Lord atid Gentlemen, 

In this case I am one of the counsel for the Plaintiff, who 
has directed me to explain to you the wrongs for which, at 
your hands, he solicits reparation. It appears to me a case 
which undoubtedly merits much consideration, as well from 
the novelty of its appearance amongst us, as for the circum- 
stances by which it is attended. Nor am I ashamed to say, that 
in my mind, not the least interesting of those circumstances is, 
the poverty of the man who has made this appeal to me. 
Few are the consolations which soothe — hard must be the heart 
which does not feel for him. He is. Gentlemen, a man of 
lowly birth and humble station ; with little wealth but from the 
labour of his hands, with no rank but the integrity of his charac- 
ter, with no recreation but in the circle of his home, and with no 
ambition, but, when his days are full, to leave that little circle the 
inheritance of an honest name, and the treasure of a good man's 
memory. Far inferior, indeed, is he in this respect to his more 
fortunate antagonist. He, on the contrary, is amply either blessed 
or cursed with those qualifications which enable a man to adorn 
or disgrace the society in which he lives. He is, I understand, 
the representative of an honourable name, the relative of a dis- 
tinguished family, the supposed heir to their virtues, the indisputa- 
])lc inheritor of their riches. He has been for many years a resi- 
dent of your county, and has had the advantage of collecting 
round him all those recollections, which, springing from the 
scenes of school-boy association, or from the more matured enjoy- 
ments of the man, crowd, as it were, unconsciously to the heart, 
and cling with a venial partiality to the companion and the 

100 



CONNAGHTON v. DIIXON. 101 

friend. So impressed, in truth, has he been with these advan- 
tages, that, surpassing the usual expenses of a trial, he has select- 
ed a tiibunal where he vainly hopes such considerations will 
have weight, and where he well knows my client's humble rank 
can have no claim but that to which his miseries may entitle him. 
I am sure, however, he has wretchedly miscalculated. I know 
none of you personally ; but I have no doubt I am addressing 
men who will not prostrate their consciences before privilege or 
power; who will remember that there is a nobility above birth, and 
a wealth beyond riches : who will feel that, as in the eye of that 
God, to whose aid they have appealed, there is not the minutest 
difference between the rag and the robe, so in the contemplation 
of that law, which constitutes our boast, guilt can have no pro- 
tection, or innocence no tyrant; men who will have pride in 
proving, that the noblest adage of our noble constitution is not 
an illusive shadow ; and that the peasant's cottage, roofed with 
straw, and tenanted by poverty, stands as inviolate from all 
invasion as the mansion of the monarch. 

My client's name. Gentlemen, is Connaghton, and when 1 
have given you his name you have almost all his history. To 
cultivate the path of honest industry comprises, in one line, " the 
short and simple annals of the poor." This has been his humble, 
but at the same time most honourable occupation. It matters 
little with what artificial nothings chance may distinguish the 
name, or decorate the person: the child of lowly life, with vir- 
tue for its handmaid, holds as proud a title as the highest — as 
rich an inheritance as the wealthiest. Well has the poet of your 
country said — ihat 

" Princes or Lords may flourish or may fade, 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; 
But a brave peasantry, their country's pride. 
When once destroyed can never be supplied." 

For all the virtues which adorn that peasantry, which can 
render humble life respected, or give the highest stations their 
most permanent distinctions, my client stands conspicuous. A 
hundred years of sad vicissitude, and, in this land, often of strong 
temptation, have rolled away since the little farm on which he 
lives received his family ; and during all that time not one accu- 
sation has disgraced, not one crime has sullied it. The same spot 
has seen his grandsire and his parent pass away from this world ; 
the village memory records their worth, and the rustic tear 



102 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

liallows their resting-place. After all, when life's nnockeries shall 
vanish fronm before us, and the heart that now beats in the proud- 
est bosom here, shall moulder, unconscious, beneath its kindred 
clay, art cannot erect a nobler monument, or genius compose 
a purer panegyric. Such, Gentlemen, was almost the only in- 
heritance with which my client entered the world. He did not 
disgrace it ; his youth, his manhood, his age, up to this mo- 
ment, have passed without a blemish ; and he now stands con- 
fessedly the head of the little village in which he lives. About 
five-and-twenty years ago he married the sister of a highly re- 
spectable Roman Catholic clergyman, by whom he had a family 
of seven children, whom they educated in the principles of mo- 
rality and religion, and who, until the defendant's interference, 
were the pride of their humble home, and the charm or the con- 
solation of its vicissitudes. In their virtuous children the rejoicing 
parents felt their youth renewed, their age made happy : the days 
of labour became holidays in their smile ; and if the hand of af- 
fliction pressed on them, they looked upon their little ones, and 
their mourning ended. I cannot paint the glorious host of 
feelings; the joy, the love, the hope, the pride, the blended para- 
dise of rich emotions with which the God of nature fills the 
father's heart when he beholds his child in all its filial loveliness, 
when the vision of his infancy rises as it were reanimate before 
him, and a divine vanity exaggerates every trifle into some mys- 
terious omen, which shall smooth his aged wrinkles and make his 
grave a monument of honour ! / cannot describe them ; but, if 
there be a parent on the jury, he will comprehend me. It is 
stated to me, that of all his children there were none more likely 
to excite such feeUngs in the plaintiff* than the unfortunate sub- 
ject of the present action; she was his favourite daughter, and 
she did not shame his preference. You shall find, most satisfac- 
torily, that she was without stain or imputation ; an aid and 
a blessing to her parents, and an example to her younger sisters, 
who looked up to her for instruction. She took a pleasure in 
assisting in the industry of their home ; and it was at a neighbour- 
ing market, where she went to dispose of the little produce of 
that industry, that she unhappily attracted the notice of the de- 
fendant. Indeed, such a situation was not without its interest, — 
a young female, in the bloom of her attractions, exerting her 
faculties in a parent's service, is an object lovely in the eye of 



CONNAGHTON v. DILLON. 103 

God, and, one would suppose, estimable in the eye of mankind. 
Far different, however, were the sensations which she excited in 
the defendant. He saw her arrayed, as he confesses, in charms 
that enchanted him ; but her youth, her beauty, the smile of her 
innocence, and the piety of her toil but inflamed a brutal and 
licentious lust, that should have blushed itself away in such a 
presence. What cared he for the consequences of his gratifica- 
tion ? — There was 



-" No honour, no relenting ruth, 



To paint the parents fondling o'er their child, 

Then show the ruined maid, and her distraction wild !" 

What thought he of the home he was to desolate? What 
thought he of the happiness he was to plunder ? His sensual 
rapine paused not to contemplate the speaking picture of the 
cottage-ruin, the blighted hope, the broken heart, the parent's 
agony, and, last and most withering in the woful group, the 
wretched victim herself starving on the sin of a promiscuous 
prostitution, and at length, perhaps, with her own hand, antici- 
pating the more tedious murder of its diseases ! He need not, if I 
am instructed rightly, have tortured his fancy for the miseraljle 
consequences of hope bereft, and expectation plundered. Through 
no very distant vista, he might have seen the form of deserted 
loveliness weeping over the worthlessness of his worldly expiation, 
and warning him, that as there were cruelties no repentance 
could atone, so there were sufferings neither wealth, nor time, 
nor absence, could alleviate.* If his memory should fail him, 
if he should deny the picture, no man can tell him half so effi- 
ciently as the venerable advocate he has so judiciously selected, 
that a case might arise, where, though the energy of native vir- 
tue should defy the spoliation of the person, still crushed affec- 
tion might leave an infliction on the mind, perhaps less deadly, 
but certainly not less indelible. I turn from this subject with an 
indignation which tortues me into brevity ; I turn to the agents 
by which this contamination was effected. 

I almost blush to name them, yet they were worthy of their 
vocation. They were no other than a menial servant of Mr. 

* Mr. Phillips here alluded to a verdict of 5000^ obtained at the late Galway 
Assizes against the defendant, at the suit of Miss Wilson, a very beautiful and in- 
teresting young lady, for a breach of promise of marriage. Mr. Whitestone, who 
now pleaded for Mr. Dillon, was Miss Wilson's advocate against him on the occa- 
sion alluded to. 



104 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

Dillon ; and a base, abandoned, profligate ruftian, a brother-in- 
law of the devoted victim herself, whose bestial appetites he 
bribed into subserviency ! It does seem as if by such a se- 
lection he was determined to degrade the dignity of the master, 
while he violated the finer impulses of the man, by not merely 
associating with his own servant, but by diverting the purest 
streams of social affinity into the vitiated sewer of his enjoyment. 
Seduced by such instruments into a low public-house at Athlone, 
this unhappy girl heard, without suspicion, their mercenary pane- 
gyric of the defendant, when, to her amazement, but, no doubt 
according to their previous arrangement, he entered and joined 
their company. I do confess to you, Gentlemen, when 1 first 
perused this passage in my brief, I flung it from me with a con- 
temptuous incredulity. What ! I exclaimed, as no doubt you are 
all ready to exclaim, can this be possible ? Is it thus I am to find 
the educated youth of Ireland occupied ? Is this the employ- 
ment of the miserable aristocracy that yet lingers in this devoted 
country 1 Am I to find them, not in the pursuit of useful science, 
not in the encouragement of arts or agriculture ; not in the relief 
of an impoverished tenantry ; not in the proud march of an un- 
successful but not less sacred patriotism ; not in the bright page 
of warlike immortality, dashing its iron crown from guilty great- 
ness, or feeding freedom's laurel with the blood of the despot ! — 
but am I to find them, amid drunken panders and corrupted 
slaves, debauching the innocence of village-life, and even amid 
the stews of the tavern, collecting or creating the materials of 
the brothel ! Gentlemen, I am still unwilling to believe it, and, 
with all the sincerity of Mr. Dillon's advocate, I do intreat you 
to reject it altogether, if it be not substantiated by the unim- 
peachable corroboration of an oath. As I am instructed, he did 
not, at this time, alarm his victim by any direct communication 
of his purpose ; he saw that "she was good as she was fair," and 
that a premature disclosure would but alarm her virtue into an 
impossibility of violation. His satellites, however, acted to admi- 
ration. They produced some trifle which he had left for her dis- 
posal ; they declared he had long felt for her a sincere attach- 
ment ; as a proof that it was pure, they urged the modesty with 
which, at a first interview, elevated above her as he was, he 
avoided its disclosure. When she pressed the madness of the 
expectation which could alone induce her to consent to his ad- 



CONNAGHTON v. DILLON. 105 

dresses, they assured her that though in the first instance such an 
event was impossible, still in time it was far from being improba- 
ble ; that many men from such motives forgot altogether the dif- 
ference of station, that Mr. Dillon's own family had already 
proved every obstacle might yield to an all-powerful passion, and 
induce him to make her his wife, who had reposed an affectionate 
credulity on his honour ! Such were the subtile artifices to which 
he stooped. Do not imagine, however, that she yielded immediately 
and implicitly to their persuasions ; I should scarcely wonder if she 
did. Every day shows us the rich, the powerful, and the educated, 
bowing before the spell of ambition, or avarice, or passion, to the 
sacrifice of their honour, their country, and their souls : what won- 
der, then, if a poor, ignorant peasant girl had at once sunk before 
the united potency of such temptations ! But she did not. Many 
and many a time the truths which had been inculcated by her 
adoring parents rose up in arms ; and it was not until various inter- 
views, and repeated artifices, and untiring efforts, that she yielded 
her faith, her fame, and her fortunes, to the disposal of her seducer. 
Alas, alas ! how Uttle did she suppose that a moment was to come 
when, every hope denounced, and every expectation dashed, he 
was to fling her for a very subsistence on the charity or the crimes 
of the world she had renounced for him! How little did she reflect 
that in her humble station, unsoiled and sinless, she might look down 
upon the elevation to which vice would raise her ! Yes, even were 
it a throne, I say she might look down on it. There is not on this 
earth a lovelier vision ; there is not for the skies a more angelic 
candidate than a young, modest maiden, robed in chastity ; no 
matter what its habitation, whether it be the palace or the hut: — 

" So dear to Heaven is saintly Chastity, 
That when a soul is found sincerely so, 
A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt, 
And in clear dream and solemn vision 
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, 
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 
Begins to cast a beam on tlie outward shape, 
The unpolluted temple of the mind, 
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence. 
Till all be made immortal !" 

Such is the supreme power of chastity, as described by one of 

our divinest bards, and the pleasure which I feel in the recitation 

of such a passage is not a little enhanced, by the pride that few 

countries more fully afford its exemplification than our own. Let 

O 



106 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

foreign envy decry us as it will, Chastity is the instinct of the 
IRISH FEMALE ; the pride of her talents, the power of her beauty, 
the splendour of her accomplishments, are but so many handmaids 
of this vestal virtue ; it adorns her in the court, it ennobles her in 
the cottage ; whether she basks in prosperity, or pines in sorrow, 
it clings about her like the diamond of the morning on the mountain 
floweret, trembling even in the ray that at once exhibits and in- 
hales it! Rare in our land is the absence of this virtue. Thanks 
to the modesty that venerates, thanks to the manliness that brands 
and avenges its violation. You have seen that it was by no com- 
mon temptations even this humble villager yielded to seduction. 

I now come, gentlemen, to another fact in the progress of this 
transaction, betraying, in my mind, as base a premeditation, and 
as low and as deliberate a deception as I ever heard of While 
this wretched creature was in a kind of counterpoise between 
her fear and her affection, struggling as well as she could between 
passion inflamed and virtue unextinguished, Mr. Dillon, ardently 
avowing that such an event as separation was impossible, 
ardently avowing an eternal attachment, insisted upon perfect- 
ing an article which should place her above the reach of contin- 
gencies. Gentlemen, you shall see this document, voluntarily 
executed by an educated and estated gentleman of your country. 
I know not how you will feel, but for my part I protest I am in 
a suspense of admiration between the virtue of the proposal and 
the magnificent prodigality of the provision. Listen to the article : 
it is all in his own hand writing : — " I promise," says he, " to give 
Mary Connaghton the sum of ten pounds sterling per annum, 
when I part with her ; but if she, the said Mary, should at any 
time hereafter conduct herself improperly, oi- (mark this, Gentle- 
men) has done so before the draiving of this article, I am not bound to 
pay the sum of ten pounds, and this article becomes null and void, 
as if the same was never executed. John Dillon." There, Gentle- 
men, there is the notable and dignified document for you! take it 
into your jury box, for I know not how to comment on it. Oh, 
yes, I have heard of ambition urging men to crime — I have heard 
of love inflaming even to madness — I have read of passion rushing 
over law and religion to enjoyment ; but never, until this, did I see 
a frozen avarice chilling the hot pulse of sensuality ; and desire 
pause before its brutish draught, that it might add deceit to de- 
solation! I need not tell you, that having provided in the very 



CONNAGHTON v. DILLON. 107 

execution of this article for its predetermined infringement ; that 
knowing, as he must, any stipulation for the purchase of vice to 
be invalid by our law ; that having in the body of this article in- 
serted a provision against that previous pollution which his 
prudent caprice might invent hereafter, but which his own con- 
science, her universal character, and even his own desire for her 
possession, all assured him did not exist at the time, I need not 
tell you that he now urges the invalidity of that instrument ; 
that he now presses that previous pollution; that he refuses from 
his splendid income the pittance of ten pounds to the wretch he 
has ruined, and spurns her from him to pine beneath the re- 
proaches of a parent's mercy, or linger out a living death in the 
charnel houses of prostitution! You see. Gentlemen, to v/hat 
designs like these may lead a man. I have no doubt, if Mr. Dillon 
had given his heart fair play, had let his own nature gain a mo- 
ment's ascendancy, he w^ould not have acted so; but there is 
something in guilt which infatuates its votaries forward ; it may 
begin with a promise broken, it will end with the home depopu- 
lated. But there is something in a seducer of peculiar turpitude. 
I know of no character so vile, so detestable. He is the vilest 
of robbers, for he plunders happiness ; the worst of murderers, 
for he murders innocence ; his appetites are of the brute, his arts 
of the demon ; the heart of the child and the corse of the parent 
are the foundations of the altar which he rears to a lust whose fires 
are the fires of hell, and whose incense is the agony of virtue! 
I hope Mr. Dillon's advocate may prove that he does not deserve 
to rank in such a class as this ; but if he does, I hope the infatua- 
tion inseparably connected with such proceedings may tempt him 
to deceive you through the same plea by which he has defrauded 
his miserable dupe. 

I dare him to attempt the defamation of a character, which, 
before his cruelties, never was even suspected. Happily, Gen- 
tlemen, happily for herself, this wretched creature, thus cast 
upon the world, appealed to the parental refuge she had for- 
feited. I need not describe to you the parent's anguish at the 
heart-rending discovery. God help the poor man w^hen misfor- 
tune comes upon him ! How few are his resources ! how distant 
his consolation ! You must not forget, Gentlemen, that it is not 
the unfortunate victim herself who appeals to you for compen- 
sation. Her crimes, poor wretch, have outlaw^ed her from retri- 



108 SrEECH IN THE CASE OF 

bution, and, liowevcr the temptations by which her erring nature 
was seduced, may procure an audience from the ear of mercy, 
the stern morality of earthly law refuses their interference. No, 
no; it is the wretched parent who comes this day before you — 
his aged locks withered by misfortune, and his heart broken by 
crimes of which he was unconscious. He resorts to this tribunal^ 
in the language of the law, claiming the value of his daughter's 
servitude ; but let it not be thought that it is for her mere manual 
labours he solicits compensation. No, you are to compensate him 
for all he has suffered, for all he has to suffer, for feelings outraged, 
for gratifications plundered, for honest pride put to the blush, for 
the exiled endearments of his once happy home, for all those in- 
numerable and instinctive ecstacies with which a virtuous daugh- 
ter fills her father's heart, for which language is too poor to have 
a name, but of which nature is abundantly and richly eloquent ! 
Do not suppose I am endeavouring to influence you by the power 
of declamation. I am laying down to you the British law, as 
liberally expounded and solemnly adjudged. I speak the lan- 
guage of the Enghsh Lord Eldon, a judge of great experience 
and greater learning. — (Mr. Phillips here cited several cases as de- 
cided by Lord Eldon.) — Such, Gentlemen, is the language of Lord 
Eldon. I speak, also, on the authority of our own Lord Avonmore, 
a judge who illuminated the bench by his genius, endeared it by 
his suavity, and dignified it by his bold uncompromising probity ; 
one of those rare men, who hid the thorns of law beneath the 
brightest flowers of literature, and, as it were, with the wand 
of an enchanter, changed a wilderness into a garden ! I speak 
upon that high authority — but I speak on other authority, para- 
mount to all! — on the authority of nature rising up within the 
heart of man, and calling for vengeance upon such an outrage. 
God forbid, that, in a case of this kind, we were to grope our way 
through the ruins of antiquity, and blunder over statutes, and 
burrow through black letter in search of an interpretation which 
Providence has engraved in living letters on every human heart. 
Yes ; if there be one amongst you blessed with a daughter, the 
smile of whose infancy still cheers your memory, and the 
promise of whose youth illuminates your hope, who has en- 
deared the toils of your manhood, whom you look up to as 
the solace of your declining years, whose embrace alleviated 
the pang of separation, whose growing welcome hailed your 



CONNAGHTON v. DILLON. 109 

oft anticipated return — oh, if there be one amongst you, to whom 
those recollections are dear, to whom those hopes are precious — 
let him only fancy that daughter torn from his caresses by a se- 
ducer's arts, and cast upon the world, robbed of her innocence, — 
and then let him ask his heart, "roAa< money could reprise him /" 

The defendant, Gentleman, cannot complain that I put it 
thus to you. If, in place of seducing, he had assaulted this poor 
girl — if he had attempted by force what he has achieved by 
fraud, his life would have been the forfeit ; and yet how trifling 
in comparison would have been the parent's agony ! He has no 
right, then, to complain, if you should estimate this outrage at 
the price of his very existence ! I am told, indeed, this gentle- 
man entertains an opinion, prevalent enough in the age of a 
feudalism, as arrogant as it was barbarous, that the poor are 
only a species of property, to be treated according to interest or 
caprice ; and that wealth is at once a patent for crime, and an 
exemption from its consequences. Happily for this land, the day 
of such opinions has passed over it — the eye of a purer feeling 
and more profound philosophy now beholds riches but as one of 
the aids to virtue, and sees in oppressed poverty only an addi- 
tional stimulus to increased protection. A generous heart cannot 
help feeling, that in cases of this kind the poverty of the injured 
is a dreadful aggravation. If the rich suffer, they have much to 
console them ; but when a poor man loses the darling of his • 
heart — the sole pleasure with which nature blessed him — how 
abject, how cureless is the despair of his destitution ! Believe 
me. Gentlemen, you have not only a solemn duty to perform, but 
you have an awful responsibility imposed upon you. You are 
this day, in some degree, trustees for the morality of the peo- 
ple — perhaps of the whole nation ; for, depend upon it, if the 
sluices of immorality are once opened among the lower orders, 
the frightful tide, drifting upon its surface all that is dignified 
or dear, will soon rise even to the habitations of the highest. I 
feel, Gentlemen, I have discharged my duty — I am sure you will 
do your^s. I repose my client with confidence in your hands ; and 
most fervently do I hope, that when evening shall find you at 
your happy fire-side, surrounded by the sacred circle of your 
children, you may not feel the heavy curse gnawing at your 
heart, of having let loose, unpunished, the prowler that may 
devour them. 



SPEECH OF MR. PHILLIPS 

IN THE CASE OP 

CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND, 
DELIVERED IN THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, DUBLIN. 



My Lord and Gentlemen, 

I AM with my learned brethren counsel for the plaintiff. My 
friend Mr. Curran has told you the nature of the action. It has 
fallen to my lot to state more at large to you the aggression by 
which it has been occasioned. Believe me it is with no paltry 
affectation of undervaluing my very humble powers that I wish 
he had selected some more experienced, or at least less credulous 
advocate. I feel I cannot do my duty ; I am not fit to address 
you; I have incapacitated myself; I know not whether any of 
the calumnies which have so industriously anticipated this trial, 
have reached your ears ; but I do confess they did so wound and 
poison mine, that to satisfy my doubts I visited the house of 
misery and mourning, and the scene which set scepticism at rest, 
has set description at defiance. Had I not yielded to those in- 
terested misrepresentations, I might from my brief have sketched 
the fact, and from my fancy drawn the consequences ; but as it 
is, reality rushes before my frighted memory, and silences the 
tongue and mocks the imagination. Believe me. Gentlemen, you 
are impannelled there upon no ordinary occasion ; nominally, in- 
deed, you are to repair a private wrong, and it is a wrong as 
deadly as human wickedness can inflict — as human weakness 
can endure ; a wrong which annihilates the hope of the parent 
and the happiness of the child ; which in one moment blights 
the fondest anticipations of the heart, and darkens the social 
hearth, and worse than depopulates the habitations of the happy ! 
But, Gentlemen, high as it is, this is far from your exclusive 
duty. You are to do much more. You arc to say whether an ex- 

110 



CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND. Ill 

ample of such transcendant turpitude is to stalk forth for public 
imitation — whether national morals are to have the law for their 
protection, or imported crime is to feed upon impunity — whether 
chastity and religion are still to be permitted to linger in this 
province, or it is to become one loathsome den of legalized prosti- 
tution — whether the sacred volume of the Gospel, and the vener- 
able statutes of the law are still to be respected, or converted 
into a pedestal on which the mob and the military are to erect 
the idol of a drunken adoration. Gentlemen, these are the 
questions you are to try ; hear the facts on which your decision 
must be founded. 

It is now about five-and-twenty years since the plaintitl, Mr. 
Creighton, commenced business as a slate merchant in the city 
of Dublin. His vocation was humble, it is true, but it was never- 
theless honest ; and though, unlike his opponent, the heights of 
ambition lay not before him, the path of respectability did — he 
approved himself a good man and a respectable citizen. Arrived 
at the age of manhood, he sought not the gratification of its 
natural desires by adultery or seduction. For him the home of 
honesty was sacred ; for him the poor man's child was unassailed; 
no domestic desolation mourned his enjoyment ; no anniversary of 
wo commemorated his achievements ; from his own sphere of life 
naturally and honourably he- selected a companion, whose beauty 
blessed his bed, and whose virtues consecrated his dwelling. 
Eleven lovely children blessed their union, the darlings of their 
heart, the delight of their evenings, and as they blindly antici- 
pated, the prop and solace of their approaching age. Oh ! sacred 
WEDDED LOVE ! how dear ! how delightful ! how divine are thy 
enjoyments ! Contentment crowns thy board, affection glads thy 
fireside; passion, chaste but ardent, modest but intense, sighs o'er 
thy couch, the atmosphere of paradise ! Surely, surely, if this 
consecrated rite can acquire from circumstances a factitious in- 
terest, 'tis when we see it cheering the poor man's home, or 
shedding over the dwelling of misfortune the light of its warm 
and lovely consolation. Unhappily, Gentlemen, it has that in- 
terest here. That capricious power which often dignifies the 
worthless hypocrite, as often wounds the industrious and the ho- 
nest. The late ruinous contest, having in its career confounded 
all the proportions of society, and with its last .gasp sighed famine 
and misfortune on tlie world, has cast my industrious client, with 



112 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

too many of his companions, from competence to penury. Alas, 
alas, to him it left worse of its satellites behind it ; it left the in 
vader even of his misery — the seducer of his sacred and unspotted 
innocence. Mysterious Providence ! was it not enough that sorrow 
robed the happy home in mourning — was it not enough that dis- 
appointment preyed upon its loveliest prospects — was it not 
enough that its little inmates cried in vain for bread, and heard 
no answer but the poor father's sigh, and drank no sustenance 
but the wretched mother's tears'? Was this a time for passion, 
lawless, conscienceless, licentious passion, with its eye of lust, its 
heart of stone, its hand of rapine, to rush into the mournful 
sanctuary of misfortune, casting crime into the cup of wo, and 
rob the parents of their last wealth, their child, and rob the child 
of her only charm, her innocence ! That this has been done I 
am instructed we shall prove : what requital it deserves, Gentle- 
men, you must prove to mankind. 

The defendant's name I understand is TowNSEJfD. He is of 
an age when every generous blossom of the spring should breathe 
an infant freshness round his heart ; of a family which should in- 
spire not only high but hereditary principles of honour ; of a pro- 
fession whose very essence is a stainless chivalry, and whose bought 
and bounden duty is the protection of the citizen. Such are the 
advantages with which he appears- before you — fearful advan- 
tages, because they repel all possible suspicion ; but you will 
agree with me, most damning adversaries, if it shall appear that 
the generous ardour of his youth was chilled — that the noble in- 
spiration of his birth was spurned — that the lofty impulse of his 
profession was despised — and that all that could grace, or ani- 
mate, or ennoble, was used to his own discredit and his fellow- 
creature's misery. 

It was upon the first of June last, that on the banks of the 
canal, near Portobello, Lieutenant Townsend first met the 
daughter of Mr. Creighton, a pretty, interesting girl, scarcely six- 
teen years of age. She was accompanied by her little sister, only 
four years old, with whom she was permitted to take a daily 
walk in that retired spot, the vicinity of her residence. The de- 
fendant was attracted by her appearance — he left his party, and 
attempted to converse with her ; she repelled his advances — he 
immediately seized her infant sister by the hand, whom he held 
as a kind of hoduge for an introduction to his victim. A pre- 



CREIGIITON V. TOWNSEND. 113 

possessing appearance, a modesty of deportment apparently quite 
incompatible with any evil design, gradually silenced her alarm, 
and she answered the common-place questions with which, on 
her way home, he addressed her. Gentlemen, I admit it was 
an innocent imprudence ; the rigid rules of matured morality 
should have repelled such communication ; yet, perhaps, judging 
even by that strict standard, you will rather condemn the fami- 
liarity of the intrusion in a designing adult, than the facility of 
access in a creature of her age and her innocence. They thus 
separated, as she naturally supposed, to meet no more. Not 
such, however, was the determination of her destroyer. From 
that hour until her ruin, he scarcely ever lost sight of her — he 
followed her as a shadow — he way-laid her in her walks — he in- 
terrupted her in her avocations — he haunted- the street of her 
residence ; if she refused to meet him, he paraded before her 
window at the hazard of exposing her first comparatively inno- 
cent imprudence to her unconscious parents. How happy would it 
have been had she conquered the timidity so natural to her age, 
and appealed at once to their pardon and their protection ! Gen- 
tlemen, this daily persecution continued for three months — for 
three successive months, by every art, by every persuasion, by 
every appeal to her vanity and her passions, did he toil for the 
destruction of this unfortunate young creature. I leave you to 
guess how many during that interval might have yielded to the 
blandishments of manner, the fascinations of youth, the rarely re- 
sisted temptations of opportunity. For three long months she did 
resist them. She would have resisted them for ever, but for an 
expedient which is without a model — but for an exploit which I 
trust in God will be without an imitation. Oh, yes, he might 
have returned to his country, and did he but reflect, he would 
rather have rejoiced at the virtuous triumph of his victim, than 
mourn his own soul-redeeming defeat ; he might have returned to 
his country, and told the cold-blooded libellers of this land that 
their speculations upon Irish chastity were prejudiced and proof- 
less ; that in the wreck of all else we had retained our honour ; 
that though the national luminary had descended for a season, 
the streaks of its loveliness still lingered on our horizon ; that 
the nurse of that genius, which abroad had redeemed the name, 
and dignified the nature of man, was to be found at home in the 
spirit without a stain, and the purity without a suspicion. He 
P 



114 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

might have told them truly that this did not result, as they would 
intimate, from the absence of passion or the want of civilization ; 
that it was the combined consequence of education, of example, 
and of impulse ! and that, though in all the revelry of enjoyment, 
the fair flowret of the Irish soil exhaled its fragrance and ex- 
panded its charms in the chaste and blessed beams of a virtuous 
affection, still it shrunk with an instinctive sensitiveness from the 
gross pollution of an unconsecrated contact ! 

Gentlemen, the common artifices of the seducer failed; the 
syren tones with which sensuality awakens appetite and lulls 
purity, had wasted themselves in air, and the intended victim, 
deaf to their fascination, moved along safe and untransformed. 
He soon saw, that young as she was, the vulgar expedients of 
vice were ineffectual ; that the attractions of a glittering ex- 
terior failed ; and that before she could be tempted to her sen- 
sual damnation, his tongue must learn, if not the words of wisdom, 
at least the speciousness of affected purity. He pretended an af- 
fection as virtuous as it was violent ; he called God to witness 
the sincerity of his declarations ; by all the vows which should 
for ever rivet the honourable, and could not fail to convince even 
the incredulous, he promised her marriage ; over and over again 
he invoked the eternal denunciation, if he was perfidious. To 
her acknowledged want of fortune, his constant reply was, that 
he had an independence ; that all he wanted was beauty and 
virtue; that he saw she had the one, that had proved she 
had the other. When she pleaded the obvious disparity of her 
birth, he answered, that he was himself only the son of an Eng- 
lish farmer ; that happiness was not the monopoly of rank or 
riches ; that his parents would receive her as the child of their 
adoption ; that he would cherish her as the charm of his exist- 
ence. Specious as it was, even this did not succeed; she deter- 
mined to await its avowal to those who had given her life, and 
who hoped to have made it immaculate by the education they 
had bestowed, and the example they had afforded. Some days 
after this he met her in her walks, for she could not pass her 
parental threshold without being intercepted. He asked where 
she was going ; — she said, a friend knowing her fondness for books, 
had promised her the loan of some, and she was going to receive 
them. He told her he had abundance, that they were just at 
his home, that he hoped after what had passed, she would 



CJIEIGHTON V. TOWNSEND. 115 

feel no impropriety in accepting them. She was persuaded to 
accompany him. Arrived, however, at the door of his lodgings, 
she positively refused to go any farther ; all his former artifices 
were redoubled ; he called God to witness he considered her as 
his wife, and her character as dear to him as that of one of his 
sisters ; he affected mortification at any suspicion of his purity ; 
he told her if she refused her confidence to his honourable affec- 
tion, the little infant who accompanied her was an inviolable 
guarantee for her protection. 

Gentlemen, this wretched child did suflTer her credulity to re- 
pose on his professions. Her theory taught her to respect the 
honour of a soldier ; her love repelled the imputation that de- 
based its object ; and her youthful innocence rendered her as 
incredulous as she was unconscious of criminality. At first his 
behaviour corresponded with his professions ; he welcomed her 
to the home of which he hoped she would soon become the in- 
separable companion ; he painted the future joys of their domes- 
tic felicity, and dwelt with peculiar complacency on some heraldic 
ornament which hung over his chimney-piece, and which, he 
said, was the armorial ensign of his family ! Oh ! my Lord, how 
well would it have been had he but retraced the fountain of that 
document; had he recalled to mind the virtues it rewarded, the 
pure train of honours it associated, the line of spotless ancestry it 
distinguished, the high ambition its bequest inspired, the moral 
imitation it imperatively commanded ! But when guilt once kin- 
dles within the human heart, all that is noble in our nature be- 
comes parched and arid ; the blush of modesty fades before its 
glare, the sighs of virtue fan its lurid flame, and every divine 
essence of our being but swells and exasperates its infernal con- 
flagration. 

Gentlemen, I will not disgust this audience ; I will not debase 
myself by any description of the scene that followed ; I will not 
detail the arts, the excitements, the promises, the pledges with 
which deliberate lust inflamed the passions, and finally over- 
powered the struggles of innocence and of youth. It is too much to 
know that tears could not appease — that misery could not affect 
— that the presence and the prayers of an infant could not awe 
him ; and that the wretched victim, between the ardour of pas- 
sion and the repose of love, sunk at length, inflamed, exhausted, 
and confiding, beneath the heartless gras^i of an unsympathizing 
sensuality. 



116 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

Tlie appetite of the liour thus satiated, at a temporal, perhaps 
ail eternal hazard, he dismissed the sisters to their unconscious 
parents, not, however, without extorting a promise, that on the 
ensuing night Miss Creighton would desert her home for ever, for 
the arms of a fond, affectionate, and faithful husband. Faithful, 
alas ! but only to his appetites, he did seduce her from that 
" sacred home," to deeper guilt, to more deliberate cruelty. 

After a suspense, comparatively happy, her parents became 
acquainted with her irrevocable ruin. The miserable mother, 
supported by the mere strength of desperation, rushed half 
phrenzied to the castle, where Mr. Townsend was on duty. 
" Give me back my child!" was all she could articulate. The pa- 
rental ruin struck the spoiler almost speechless. The few dread- 
ful words, ^^ I have your child,'" withered her heart up with the 
horrid joy that death denied its mercy, that her daughter lived, 
but lived, alas, to infamy. She could neither speak nor hear ; 
she sunk down convulsed and powerless. As soon as she could 
recover to any thing of effort, naturally did she turn to the 
residence of Mr Townsend ; his orders had anticipated her — the 
sentinel refused her entrance. She told her sad narration, she 
implored his pity ; with the eloquence of grief she asked him, 
had he home, or wife or children. " Oh, Holy Nature ! thou didst 
not plead in vain !" even the rude soldier's heart relented. He 
admitted her by stealth, and she once more held within her arms 
the darling hope of many an anxious hour ; duped, desolate, de- 
graded it was true — but still — but still " her child." Gentlemen, 
if the parental heart cannot suppose what followed, how little 
adequate arn I to paint it. Home this wretched creature could 
not return ; a seducer's mandate, and a father's anger equally 
forbade it. But she gave whatever consolation she was capable; 
she told the fatal tale of her undoing — the hopes, the promises, 
the studied specious arts that had seduced her ; and with a despe- 
rate credulity still watched the light that, glimmering in the distant 
vista of her love, mocked her with hope, and was to leave her to 
the tempest. To all the prophecies of maternal anguish, she 
would still reply, " Oh, no — in the eye of Heaven he is my hus- 
band ; he took me from my home, my happiness, and you ; but 
still he pledged to me a soldier's honour — but he assured me with 
a Christian's conscience ; for three long months I heard his vows 
of love ; he is honourable and will not deceive ; he is human and 



CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND. 117 

cannot desert me." Hear, Gentlemen, hear, I beseech you, how 
this innocent confidence was returned. When her indignant 
father had resorted to Lord Forbes, the commander of the forces, 
and to the noble and learned head of this Court, both of whom 
received him with a sympathy that did them honour, Mr. Town- 
send sent a brother officer to inform her she must quit his re- 
sidence and take lodgings. In vain she remonstrated, in vain 
she reminded him of her former purity, and of the promises that 
betrayed it. She was literally turned out at night-fall to find 
whatever refuge the God of the shelterless might provide for her. 
Deserted and disowned, how naturally did she turn to the once 
happy home, whose inmates she had disgraced, and whose pro- 
tection she had forfeited ! how naturally did she think the once 
familiar and once welcome avenues looked frowning as she 
passed ! how naturally did she linger like a reposeless spectre 
round the memorials of her living happiness ! Her heart failed 
her ; where a parent's smile had ever cheered her, she could not 
face the glance of shame, or sorrow, or disdain. She returned 
to seek her seducer's pity even till the morning. Good God ! 
how can I disclose it ! — the very guard had orders to refuse her 
access ; even by the rabble soldiery she was cast into the street, 
amid the night's dark horrors, the victim of her own credulity, 
the outcast of another's crime, to seal her guilty woes with sui- 
cide, or lead a living death amid the tainted sepulchres of a pro- 
miscuous prostitution ! Far, far am I from sorry that it was so. 
Horrible beyond thought as is this aggravation, I only hear in it 
the voice of the Deity in thunder upon the crime. Yes, yes ; it 
is the present God arming the vicious agent against the vice, and 
terrifying from its conception by the turpitude to which it may 
lead. But what aggravation does seduction need ! Vice is its 
essence, lust its end, hypocrisy its instrument, and innocence its 
victim. Must I detail its miseries 1 Who depopulates the home 
of virtue, making the child an orphan and the parent childless? 
Who rests its crutch from the tottering helplessness of piteous 
age 1 Who wrings its happiness from the heart of youth? Who 
shocks the vision of the public eye ? Who infects your very 
thoroughfares with disease, disgust, obscenity, and profaneness ? 
Who pollutes the harmless scenes where modesty resorts for 
mirth, and toil for recreation, with sights that stain the pure and 
shock the sensitive ? Are these the phrases of an interested ad- 



118 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

vocacy ? is there one amongst you but has witnessed their verifi- 
cation ? Is there one amongst you so fortunate, or so secluded, 
as not to have wept over the wreck of health, and youth, and 
loveliness, and talent, the fatal trophies of the seducer's triumph 
— some form, perhaps, where every grace was squandered, and 
every beauty paused to w^aste its bloom, and every beam of mind 
and tone of melody poured their profusion on the public wonder ; 
all that a parent's prayer could ask, or a lover's adoration fancy; 
in whom even pollution looked so lovely, that virtue would have 
made her more than human? Is there an epithet too vile for 
such a spoiler 1 Is there a punishment too severe for such depra- 
vity ? I know not upon what complaisance this English seducer 
may calculate from a jury of this country : I know not, indeed, 
whether he may not think he does your wives and daughters 
some honour by their contamination. But I know well what 
reception he would experience from a jury of his own country. 1 
know that in such general execration do they view this crime, 
they think no possible plea a palliation ! no, not the mature age of 
the seduced; not her previously protracted absence from her 
parents ; not a levity approaching almost to absolute guilt ; not 
an indiscretion in the mother, that bore every colour of conni- 
vance ; and in this opinion they have been supported by all the 
venerable authorities with whom age, integrity, and learning 
have adorned the judgment-seat. 

Gentlemen, I come armed with these authorities. In the case 
of TulHdge against Wade, my Lord, it appeared the person se- 
duced was thirty years of age, and long before absent from her 
home ; yet, on a motion to set aside the verdict for excessive 
damages, what was the language of Chief Justice Wilmot 1 "I 
regret," said he, " that they were not greater; though the plain- 
tiff's loss did not amount to twenty shillings, the jury were right 
in giving ample damages, because such actions should be encou- 
raged for example's sake." Justice Clive wished they had given 
twice the sum, and in this opinion the whole bench concurred. 
T/iere was a case where the girl was of mature age, and living 
apart from her parents ; Jiere, the victim is almost a child, and 
was never for a moment separated from her home. Again, in 
the case of "Bennet against Alcot," on a similar motion, grounded 
on the apparently overwhelming fact, that the mother of the 
girl had actually sent the defendant into her daughter's bed- 



CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND. 119 

chamber, where the criminahty occurred, Justice BuUer declared, 
" he thought the parent's indiscretion no excuse for the defend- 
ant's culpabihty ;" and the verdict of 200/. damages was con- 
firmed. There was a case of hteral connivance : here, will they 
have the hardihood to hint even its suspicion 1 You all must re- 
member, Gentlemen, the case of our own countryman. Captain 
Gore, against whom, only the other day, an English jury gave a 
verdict of 1,500/. damages, though it was proved that the person 
alleged to have been seduced was herself the seducer, going 
even so far as to throw gravel up at the windows of the defend- 
ant; yet Lord Ellenborough refused to disturb the verdict. 
Thus you may see I rest not on my own proofless and unsupported 
dictum. I rely upon grave decisions and venerable authorities — 
not only on the indignant denunciation of the moment, but on 
the deliberate concurrence of the enlightened and the dispassion- 
ate. I see my learned opponent smile. I tell him I would not 
care if the books were an absolute blank upon the subject. I 
would then make the human heart my authority ! I would ap- 
peal to the bosom of every man who hears me, whether such a 
crime should grow unpunished into a precedent ; whether inno- 
cence should be made the subject of a brutal speculation ; whe- 
ther the sacred seal of filial obedience, upon which the Almighty 
Parent has afiixed his eternal fiat, should be violated by a blas- 
phemous and selfish libertinism ! 

Gentlemen, if the cases I have quoted, palliated as they were, 
have been humanely marked by ample damages, what should 
you give here where there is nothing to excuse — where there is 
every thing to aggravate ! The seduction was deliberate, it was 
three months in progress, its victim was almost a child, it was com- 
mitted under the most alluring promises, it was followed by a deed 
of the most dreadful cruelty ; but, above all, it was the act of a 
man commissioned by his own country, and paid by this, for the 
enforcement of the laws, and the preservation of society. No 
man rhore respects than I do the well-earned reputation of the 
British army ; 

" It is a school 
Where every principle tending to honour 
Is taught — if followed." 

But in the name of that distinguished army, I here solemnly ap- 
peal against an act, which would blight its greenest laurels, and 



120 CREIGHTON v. TOWNSEND. 

lay its trophies prostrate in the dust. Let them war, but be it 
not on domestic happiness ; let them invade, but be their country's 
hearths inviolable ; let them achieve a triumph wherever their 
banners fly, but be it not over morals, innocence, and virtue. I 
know not by what palliation the defendant means to mitigate 
this enormity ; — will he plead her youth ? it should have been 
her protection. — Will he plead her levity ? I deny the fact; but 
even were it true, what is it to him? what right has any man to 
speculate on the temperature of your wives and your daughters, 
that he may defile your bed, or desolate your habitation ? Will 
he plead poverty ? I never knew a seducer or an adulterer that 
did not. He should have considered that before. But is poverty 
an excuse for crime ? Our law says, he who has not a purse to 
pay for it, must suffer for it in his person. It is a most wise de- 
claration ; and for my part, I never hear such a person plead 
poverty, that my first emotion is not a thanksgiving, that Pro- 
vidence has denied, at least, the instrumentality of wealth to the 
accomplishment of his purposes. Gentlemen, I see you agree 
with me. I waive the topic ; and I again tell you, that if what 
I know will be his chief defence were true, it should avail him 
nothing. He had no right to speculate on this wretched crea- 
ture's levity to ruin her, and still less to ruin her family. Re- 
member, however, Gentlemen, that even had this wretched 
child been indiscreet, it is not in her name we ask for reparation; 
no, it is in the name of the parents her seducer has heart-broken; 
it is in the name of the poor helpless family he has desolated ; it 
is in the name of that misery, whose sanctuary he has violated ; 
it is in the name of law, virtue, and morality ; it is in the name 
of that country whose fair fame foreign envy will make respon- 
sible for this crime ; it is in the name of nature's dearest, ten- 
derest sympathies ; it is in the name of all that gives your toil 
an object, and your ease a charm, and your age a hope — I ask 
from you the value of the poor mail's child. 



SPEECH OF MR. PHILLIPS 

IN THE CASE OF 

BLAKE V. WILKINS: 
DELIVERED IN THE COUNTY COURT-HOUSE, GALWAY. 



May it please your Lordship, 

The Plaintiff's Counsel tell me, Gentlemen, most unexpectedly, 
that they have closed his case, and it becomes my duty to state 
to you that of the defendant. The nature of this action, you 
have already heard. It is one which, in my mind, ought to be 
very seldom brought, and very sparingly encouraged. It is 
founded on circumstances of the most extreme delicacy, and it 
is intended to visit with penal consequences the non-observance 
of an engagement, which is of the most paramount importance 
to society, and which of all others, perhaps, ought to be the most 
unbiassed, — an engagement which, if it be voluntary, judicious, 
and disinterested, generally produces the happiest effects; but 
which, if it be either unsuitable or compulsory, engenders not only 
individual misery, but consequences universally pernicious. There 
are few contracts between human beings which should be more 
deliberate than that of marriage. I admit it should be very cau- 
tiously promised ; but, even when promised, I am far from con- 
ceding that it should invariably be performed ; a thousand circum- 
stances may form an impediment ; change of fortune may render 
it imprudent, change of affection may make it culpable. The very 
party to whom the law gives the privilege of complaint has perhaps 
the most reason to be grateful, — grateful that its happiness has not 
been surrendered to caprice ; grateful that religion has not con- 
strained an unwilling acquiescence, or made an unavoidable deser- 
tion doubly criminal ; grateful that an offspring has not been sacri- 
ficed to the indelicate and ungenerous enforcement; grateful that 
an innocent secret disincUnation did not too late evince itself in an 
irresistible and irremediable disgust. You will agree with me, 
however, that if there exists any excuse for such an action, it is on 
a 121 



122 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

the side of the female ; because every female object being more 
exclusively domestic, such a disappointment is more severe in 
its visitation ; because the very circumstance concentrating their 
feelings renders them naturally more sensitive of a wound ; be- 
cause their best treasure, their reputation, may have suffered 
from the intercourse ; because their chances of reparation are 
less, and their habitual seclusion makes them feel it more ; be- 
cause there is something in the desertion of their helplessness 
which almost immerges the illegality in the unmanliness of the 
abandonment. However, if a man seeks to enforce this engage- 
ment, every one feels some indelicacy attached to the requisition. 
I do not inquire into the comparative justness of the reasoning, 
but does not every one feel that there appears some meanness in 
forcing a female into an alliance ? Is it not almost saying, " I 
will expose to public shame the credulity on which I practised, 
or you must pay to me in monies numbered, the profits of that 
heartless speculation ; I have gambled with your affections, I 
have secured your bond, I will extort the penalty either from 
your purse or your reputation !" I put a case to you where the 
circumstances are reciprocal ; where age, fortune, situation, are 
the same ; where there is no disparity of years to make the suppo- 
sition ludicrous ; where there is no disparity of fortune to render it 
suspicious. Let us see whether the present action can be so pal- 
liated, or whetherit does not exhibit a picture of fraud and avarice, 
and meanness and hypocrisy, so laughable, that it is almost impos- 
sible to criticise it, and yet so debasing that human pride almost 
forbids its ridicule. 

It has been left me to defend my unfortunate old client from 
the double battery of Love and of Law, which at the age of sixty- 
five has so unexpectedly opened on her. Oh, Gentlemen, how 
vain-glorious is the boast of beauty ! How misapprehended have 
been the charms of youth, if years and wrinkles can thus despoil 
their conquests, and depopulate the navy of its prowess, and be- 
guile the bar of its eloquence ! How mistaken were all the 
amatory poets from Anacreon downwards, who preferred the 
bloom of the rose and the thrill of the nightingale, to the saffron 
hide and dulcet treble of sixty-five ! Even our own sweet bard 
has had the folly to declare, that 

" He once had heard tell of an amorous youth, 
Who was caught in his grandmother's bed ; 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 123 

But owns he had ne'er such a liquorish tooth, 
As to wish to be there in his stead." 

Royal wisdom has said, that we hve in a " New Era." The 
reign of old women has commenced; and if Johanna Southcote con- 
verts England to her creed, why should not Ireland, less pious 
perhaps, but at least equally passionate, kneel before the shrine 
of the irresistible Widow Wilkins. It appears. Gentlemen, to 
have been her happy fate to have subdued particularly the death- 
dealing professions. Indeed in the love episodes of the heathen 
mythology. Mars and Venus were considered as inseparable. I 
know not whether any of you have ever seen a very beautiful print 
representing the fatal glory of Quebec, and the last moments of 
its immortal conqueror — if so, you must have observed the figure 
of the staff physician, in whose arms the hero is expiring — that 
identical personage, my Lord, was the happy swain, who, forty 
or fifty years ago, received the reward of his valour and his skill 
in the virgin hand of my venerable client ! The Doctor lived some- 
thing more tha?i a century, during a great part of which Mrs. 
Wilkins was his companion — alas. Gentlemen, long as he lived, 
he lived not long enough to behold her beauty — 

" That beauty, like the Aloe flower, 

But bloomed and blossomed at fourscore." 

He was, however, so far fascinated as to bequeath to her the lega- 
cies of his patients, when he found he was predoomed to follow 
them. To this circumstance, very far be it from me to hint, that 
Mrs. W. is indebted for any of her attractions. Rich, however, 
she undoubtedly was, and rich she would still as undoubtedly 
have continued, had it not been for her intercourse with the 
family of the plaintiff. I do not impute it as a crime to them that 
they happened to be necessitous, but I do impute it as both crimi- 
nal and ungrateful, that after having lived on the generosity of 
their friend, after having literally exhausted her most prodigal 
liberality, they should drag her infirmities before the public gaze, 
vainly supposing that they could hide their own contemptible 
avarice in the more prominent exposure of her melancholy dotage. 
The father of the plaintiff, it cannot be unknown to you, was for 
many years in the most indigent situation. Perhaps it is not a 
matter of concealment either, that he found in Mrs. Wilkins a 
generous benefactress. She assisted and supported him, until at 
last his increasing necessities reduced him to take refuge in an act 
of insolvency. During their intimacy, frequent allusion was made 



124 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

to a son whom Mrs. Wilkins had never seen since he was a child, 
and who had risen to a Heutenancy in the navy, under the pa- 
tronage of tlieir relative, Sir Benjamin Bloomfield. In a parent's 
panegyric, the gallant lieutenant was of course all that even hope 
could picture. Young, gay, heroic, and disinterested, the pride 
of the navy, the prop of the country, independent as the gale 
that wafted, and bounteous as the wave that bore him. I am 
afraid that it is rather an anti-climax to tell you after this, that 
he is the present Plaintiff The eloquence of Mrs, Blake was not 
exclusively confined to her encomiums on the lieutenant. She 
diverged at times into an episode on the matrimonial felicities, 
painted the joy of passion and delights of love, and obscurely hint- 
ed that Hymen, with his torch, had an exact personification in her 
son Peter, bearing a match light in His Majesty's ship the Hydra. 
— While these contrivances were practising on Mrs. Wilkins, a bye- 
plot was got up on board the Hydra, and Mr. Blake returned to 
his mourning country, influenced, as he says, by his partiality for 
the Defendant, but in reality compelled by ill health and disap- 
pointments, added, perhaps, to his mother's very absurd and 
avaricious speculations. What a loss the navy had of him, and 
what a loss he had of the navy! Alas, Gentlemen, he could not 
resist his affection for a female he never saw. Almighty love 
eclipsed the glories of ambition — Trafalgar and St. Vincent flit- 
ted from his memory — he gave all up for woman, as Mark An- 
tony did before him ; and, like the Cupid in Hudibras, he 

"— took his stand 



Upon a widow's jointure land — 
His tender sigh and trickling^ tear 
Longed for five hundred pounds a year ; 
And languishing desires were found 
Of Statute, Mortgage, Bill, and Bond !" 

— Oh, Gentlemen, only imagine him on the lakes of North 
America ! Alike to him the varieties of season or the vicissitudes 
of warfare. One sovereign image monopolizes his sensibilities. 
Does the storm rage? the Widow Wilkins outsighs the whirlwind. 
Is the ocean calm 1 its mirror shows him the lovely Widow Wil- 
kins. Is the battle won ? he thins his laurel that the Widow 
Wilkins may interweave her myrtles. Does the broadside thun- 
der ? he invokes the Widow Wilkins ! 

" A sweet little Cherub she sits up aloft 
To keep watch for the life of poor Peter !" 

— Alas, how much he is to be pitied ! How amply he should be 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 125 

recompensed ! Who but must mourn his sublime, disinterested, 
sweet-souled patriotism ! Who but must sympathize with his 
pure, ardent, generous affection ! — affection too confiding to re- 
quire an interview I — affection too warm to wait even for an intro- 
duction ! Indeed his Amanda herself seemed to think his love 
was most desirable at a distance, for at the very first visit after 
his return he was refused admittance. His captivating charmer 
was then sick and nurse-tended at her brother's house, after a 
winter's confinement, reflecting, most likely, rather on her funeral 
than her wedding. Mrs. Blake's avarice instantly took the alarm, 
and she wrote the letter, which I shall now proceed to read to you. 

[Mr. Vandeleur, — My Lord, unwilling as I am to interrupt a 
statement which seems to create so universal a sensation, still I 
hope your Lordship will restrain Mr. Phillips from reading a letter 
which cannot hereafter be read in evidence. 

Mr. O'Connel rose for the purpose of supporting the propriety 
of the course pursued by the Defendant's Counsel, when] 

Mr. Phillips resumed — My Lord, although it is utterly impos- 
sible for the learned Gentleman to say, in what manner here- 
after this letter might be made evidence, still my case is too 
strong to require any cavilling upon such trifles. I am content 
to save the public time, and waive the perusal of the letter. 
However, they have now given its suppression an importance 
which perhaps its production could not have procured for it. 
You see. Gentlemen, what a case they have when they insist on 
the withholding of the documents which originated with them- 
selves. I accede to their very politic interference. I grant them, 
since they entreat it, the mercij of my silejice. Certain, it is, how- 
ever, that a letter was received from Mrs. Blake; and that 
almost immediately after its receipt, Miss Blake intruded herself 
at Brownville, where Mrs. Wilkins was — remained two days — la- 
mented bitterly her not having appeared to the lieutenant, when 
he called to visit her — said that her poor mother had set her 
heart on an alliance — that she w^as sure, dear woman, a disap- 
pointment would be the death of her ; in short, that there was 
no alternative but the tomb or the altar ! To all this Mrs. Wil- 
kins only replied, how totally ignorant the parties most interested 
were of each other, and that were she even inclined to connect 
herself with a stranger (poor old fool!) the debts in which her 
generosity to the family had already involved her, formed, at 



126 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

least for the present, an insurmountable impediment. This was 
not sufficient. In less than a week, the indefatigable Miss Blake 
returned to the charge, actually armed with an old family-bond 
to pay off the incumbrances, and a renewed representation of 
the mother's suspense and the brother's desperation. You will 
not fail to observe. Gentlemen, that while the female conspirators 
were thus at work, the lover himself had never even seen the object 
of idolatry. Like the maniac in the farce, he fell in love with the 
picture of his grandmother. Like a prince of the blood, he was 
willing to woo and to be wedded by proxy. For the gratification 
of his avarice, he was contented to embrace age, disease, infir- 
mity, and widowhood— to bind his youthful passions to the car- 
cass for which the grave was opening — to feed by anticipation 
on the uncold corpse, and cheat the worm of its reversionary cor- 
ruption. Educated in a profession proverbially generous, he offered 
to barter every joy for money ! Born in a country ardent to 
a fault, he advertised his happiness to the highest bidder ! and 
he now solicits an honourable jury to become the panders to this 
heartless cupidity ! Thus beset, harrassed, conspired against, 
their miserable victim entered into the contract you have heard 
— a contract conceived in meanness, extorted by fraud, and sought 
to be enforced by the most profligate conspiracy. Trace it through 
every stage of its progress, in its origin, its means, its effects — 
from the parent contriving it through the sacrifice of her son, 
and forwarding it through the indelicate instrumentality of her 
daughter, down to the son himself unblushingly acceding to the 
atrocious combination by which age was to be betrayed, and 
youth degraded, and the odious imion of decrepit lust and pre- 
cocious avarice blasphemously consecrated by the solemnities of 
religion ! Is this the example which, as parents, you would 
sanction ? Is this the principle you would adopt yourselves ? 
Have you never witnessed the misery of an unmatched marriage? 
Have you never worshipped the bliss by which it has been hal- 
lowed, when its torch, kindled at affection's altar, gives the noon 
of life its warmth and its lustre, and blesses its evening with a 
more chastened, but not less lovely illumination ? Are you pre- 
pared to say, that this rite of heaven, revered by each country, 
cherished by each sex, the solemnity of every Church, and the 
Sacrament of one, shall be profaned into the ceremonial of an 
obscene and soul-degrading avarice ! 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 127 

No sooner was this contract, the device of their covetousness 
and the evidence of their shame, swindled from the wretched 
object of this conspiracy, than its motive became apparent ; they 
avowed themselves the keepers of their melancholy victim ; they 
watched her movements ; they dictated her actions ; they forbade 
all intercourse with her own brother ; they duped her into ac- 
cepting bills, and let her be arrested for the amount. They ex- 
ercised the most cruel and capricious tyranny upon her, now me- 
nacing her with the publication of her follies, and now with the 
still more horrible enforcement of a contract that thus betrayed 
its anticipated inflictions ! Can you imagine a more disgusting 
exhibition of how weak and how worthless human nature may 
be, than this scene exposes ? On the one hand, a combination 
of sex and age, disregarding the most sacred obligations, and 
trampling on the most tender ties, from a mean greediness of 
lucre, that neither honour or gratitude or nature could appease, 
" Lucri bonus est odor exrequalihet." On the other hand, the poor 
shrivelled relic of what once was health, and youth, and anima- 
tion, sought to be embraced in its infection, and caressed in its 
infirmity — crawled over and corrupted by the human reptiles, 
before death had shovelled it to the less odious and more natural 
vermin of the grave ! What an object for the speculations of 
avarice ! What an angel for the idolatry of youth ! Gentlemen, 
when this miserable dupe to her own doting vanity and the vice 
of others, saw how she was treated — when she found herself 
controlled by the mother, beset by the daughter, beggared by 
the father, and held by the son as a kind of windfall, that, too 
rotten to keep its hold, had fallen at his feet to be squeezed and 
trampled ; when she saw the intercourse of her relatives prohi- 
bited, the most trifling remembrances of her ancient friendship 
denied, the very exercise of her habitual charity denounced ; 
when she saw that all she was worth was to be surrendered to a 
family confiscation, and that she was herself to be gibhetted i?i the 
chains of xvedlock, an example to every superannuated dotard, 
upon whose plunder the ravens of the world might calculate, 
she came to the wisest determination of her life, and decided 
that her fortune should remain at her own disposal. Acting upon 
this decision, she wrote to Mr. Blake, complaining of the cruelty 
with which she had been treated, desiring the restoration of the 
contract of which she had been duped, and declaring, as the oilly 



128 SPEECH IN THE CASE OP 

means of securing respect, her final deternnination as to the 
control over her property. To this letter, addressed to the son, a 
verbal answer (mark the conspiracy) was returned from the mo- 
ther, withholding all consent, unless the property was settled on 
her family, but withholding the contract at the same time. The 
wretched old woman could not sustain this conflict. She was 
taken seriously ill, confined for many months in her brother's 
house, from whom she was so cruelly sought to be separated, 
until the debts in which she was involved and a recommended 
change of scene transferred her to Dublin. There she was re- 
ceived with the utmost kindness by her relative, Mr. Mac Na- 
mara, to whom she confided the delicacy and distress of her si- 
tuation. That gentleman, acting at once as her agent and her 
friend, instantly repaired to Galway, where he had an interview 
with Mr. Blake. This was long before the commencement of 
any action. A conversation took place between them on the 
subject, which must, in my mind, set the present action at rest 
altogether ; because it must show that the non-performance of 
the contract originated entirely with the plaintiff' himself. Mr. 
Mac Namara inquired, whether it was not true, that Mr. Blake's 
own family declined any connection, unless Mrs. Wilkins con- 
sented to settle on them the entire of her property ? Mr. Blake 
replied it was. Mr. Mac Namara rejoined, that her contract 
did not bind her to any such extent. " No," replied Mr, Blake, 
"I know it does not ; however, tell Mrs. Wilkins that I understand 
she has about 580/. a year, and I will he contejit to settle the 
odd 801. on her by wmj of pocket money." Here, of course, the 
conversation ended, which Mr. Mac Namara detailed, as he was 
desired, to Mrs. Wilkins, who rejected it with the disdain, which, 
I hope, it will excite in every honourable mind. A topic, how- 
ever, arose during the interview, which unfolds the motives and 
illustrates the mind of Mr. Blake more than any observation 
which I can make on it. As one of the inducements to the pro- 
jected marriage, he actually proposed the prospect of a 50Z. an- 
nuity as an officer's widow's pension, to which she would be en- 
titled in the event of his decease ! I will not stop to remark on 
the delicacy of this inducement — I will not dwell on the ridicule 
of the anticipation — I will not advert to the glaring dotage on 
which he speculated, when he could seriously hold out to a wo- 
man of her years the prospect of such an improbable survivor- 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 129 

ship. But I do ask you, of what materials must the man be 
composed who could thus debase the national liberality ! What! 
was the recompense of that lofty heroism which has almost ap- 
propriated to the British navy the monopoly of maritime re- 
nown — was that grateful offering which a weeping country pours 
into the lap of its patriot's widow, and into the cradle of its 
warrior's orphan — was that generous consolation with which a 
nation's gratitude cheers the last moments of her dying hero, by 
the portraiture of his children sustained and ennobled by the 
legacy of his achievements, to be thus deliberately perverted 
into the bribe of a base, reluctant, unnatural prostitution ! Oh ! 
I know of nothing to parallel the self-abasement of such a deed, 
except the audacity that requires an honourable jury to abet it. 
The following letter from Mr. Anthony Martin, Mr. Blake's at- 
torney, unfolded the future plans of this unfeeling conspiracy. 
Perhaps the Gentlemen would wish also to cushion this document 1 
They do not. Then I shall read it. The letter is addressed to 
Mrs. Wilkins. 

" Galway, Jan. 9, 1817. 
" Madam, — I have been applied to, professionally, by Lieuten- 
ant Peter Blake, to take proceedings against you on rather an tm- 
pleasant occasion; but, from every letter of your's, and other docu- 
ments, together with the material and irreparable loss Mr. Blake 
has sustained in his professional prospects by means of you?- pro- 
posals to him, makes it indispensably necessary for him to get 
remuneration from you. Under these circumstances, I am obliged 
to say, that I have his directions to take immediate proceedings 
against you, unless he is in some measure compensated for your 
breach of promise to him. I should feel happy that you would 
save me the necessity of acting professionally by settling the busi- 
ness, [You see, Gentlemen, money, money, money, runs through 
the whole amour,] and not suffer it to come to a public investiga- 
tion, particularly, as I conceive, from the legal advice Mr. Blake 
has got, together with all I have seen, it will ultimately terminate 
most honourahly to his advantage, and to your pecuniary loss. — I 
have the honour to remain, Madam, your very humble servant, 

"Anthony Martin." 

Indeed, I think Mr. Anthony Martin is mistaken. Indeed, 1 
think no twelve men, upoii their oaths will say (even admitting 
the truth of all he asserts) that it was honourable for a British 
R 



130 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

officer to abandon the navy on such a speculation — to desert so 
noble a profession — to forfeit the ambition it ought to have asso- 
ciated — the rank to which it leads — the glory it may confer, for 
the purpose of extorting from an old vroman he never saw, the pur- 
chase-money of his degradation ! But I rescue the Plaintiff from 
this disgraceful imputation. I cannot believe that a member of 
a profession not less remarkable for the valour than the gene- 
rosity of its spirit — a profession as proverbial for its profusion in 
the harbour as for the prodigality of its life-blood on the wave — 
a profession ever willing to fling money to the winds, and only 
anxious that they should waft through the world its immor- 
tal banner crimsoned with the record of a thousand victories ! 
No, no. Gentlemen ; notwithstanding the great authority of Mr. 
Anthony Martin, I cannot readily believe that any man could be 
found to make the high honour of this noble service a base, mer- 
cenary, sullen pander to the prostitution of his youth ! The fact 
is, that increasing ill health, and the improbability of promotion, 
combined to induce his retirement on half pay. You will find 
this confirmed by the date of his resignation, which was imme- 
diately after the battle of Waterloo, which settled (no matter 
how) the destinies of Europe. His constitution was declining, 
his advancement was annihilated, and, as a forlorn hope, he bom- 
barded the Widow Wilkins ! 

"War thoughts had left their places vacant : 

In their room came, thronging, soft and amorous desires 

All telling him how fair — young Hero was." 

He first, Gentlemen, attacked her fortune with herself, through 
the Artillery of the Church, and having failed in that, he now 
attacks her fortune without herself, through the assistance of the 
law. However, if I am instructed rightly, he has nobody but 
himself to blame for his disappointment. Observe, I do not vouch 
for the authenticity of the fact ; but I do certainly assure you, 
that Mrs. Wilkins was persuaded of it. You know the proverb- 
ial frailty of our nature. The gallant lieutenant was not free from 
it. Perhaps you imagine, that some younger, or according to his 
taste, some older fair one, weaned him from the widow. Indeed 
they did not. He had no heart to lose, and yet (can you solve the 
the paradox ?) his infirmity was love. As the Poet says — 

" LOVE — STILL LOVE." 

No, it was not to Venus, it was to Bacchus, he sacrificed. With 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 13£ 

an eastern idolatry he commenced at day-light, and so persevering 
was his piety till the shades of night, that when he was not on 
his knees, he could scarcely he said to be on his legs! When I came 
to this passage, I could not avoid involuntarily exclaiming, Oh, 
Peter, Peter, whether it be in liquor or in love — 
" None but thyself can be thy parallel I" 
I see by your smiling. Gentlemen, that you correct my error. 
I perceive your classic memories recurring to, perhaps, the only 
prototype to be found in history. I beg his pardon. I should not 
have overlooked 

-the immortal Captain Wattle, 



Who was all for love and — a little for the bottle." 
Ardent as our fair ones have been announced to be, they do not 
prefer a flame that is so exclusively spiritual. Widow Wilkins, no 
doubt, did not choose to be singular. In the words of the bard, and, 
my Lord, I perceive you excuse my dwelling so much on the autho- 
rity of the muses, because really, on this occasion, the minstrel 
seems to have combined the powers of poetry with the spirit of 
prophecy — in the very words of the Bard, 

"He asked her, would she marry him — Widow Wilkins answered No — 
Then said he, I'll to the Ocean rock, I'm ready for the slaughter, 
Oh ; — I'll shoot at my sad image, as it 's sighing in the water — 
Only think of Widow Wilkins, saying — Go, Peter — Go I" 

But, Gentlemen, let us try to be serious, and seriously give me 
leave to ask you, on what grounds does he solicit your verdict ? 
Is it for the loss of his profession ? Does he deserve compensation 
if he abandoned it for such a purpose — if he deserted at once 
his duty and his country to trepan the weakness of a wealthy 
dotard 1 But did he, (base as the pretence is,) did he do so 1 Is 
there nothing to cast any suspicion on the pretext? nothing in 
the aspect of public affairs'? In the universal peace? in the un- 
certainty of being put in commisson ? in the downright impossi- 
bility of advancement ? Nothing to make you suspect that he 
imputes as a contrivance, what was the manifest result of an ac- 
cidental contingency ? Does he claim on the ground of sacrificed 
affection ? Oh, Gentlemen, only fancy what he has lost — if it were 
but the blessed raptures of the bridal night! Do not suppose I 
am going to describe it ; I shall leave it to the learned Counsel 
he has selected to compose his epithalamium. I shall not exhibit 
the venerable trembler — at once a relic and a relict ; with a grace 



132 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

for every year and a cupid in every wrinkle — afTecting to shrink 
from the flame of his impatience, and fanning it with the ambro- 
sial sigh of sixty-five ! I cannot paint the tierce meridian tran- 
sports of the honey moon, gradually melting into a more chas- 
tened and permanent affection — every 7dHe mo7iths adding a link 
to the chain of their delicate embraces, xmtil, too soon, Death's 
broadside lays the Lieutenant low, consoling, however, his patri- 
archal charmer, (old enough at the time to be the last wife of 
Melhusalem) with a fifty pound annuity, being the balance of his 
glory against his Majesty^s Ship, the Hydra ! 

Give me leave to ask you, is this one of the cases, to meet 
which, this very rare and delicate action was intended '? Is this 
a case where a riciprocity of circumstances, of affection, or of 
years, throw even a shade of rationality over the contract ? Do 
not imagine I mean to insinuate, that under no circumstances 
ought such a proceeeding to be adopted. Do not imagine, though 
I say this action belongs more naturally to a female, its adoption 
can never be justified by one of the other sex. Without any 
great violence to my imagination, I can suppose a man in the 
very spring of life, when his sensibilities are most acute, and 
his passions most ardent, attaching himself to some object, young, 
lovely, talented, and accomplished, concentrating, as he thought, 
every charm of personal perfection, and in whom those charms 
were only heightened by the modesty that veiled them ; per- 
haps his preference was encouraged ; his affection returned; his 
very sigh echoed until he was conscious of his existence but by 
the soul creating sympathy — until the world seemed but the re- 
sidence of his love, and that love the principle that gave it ani- 
mation — until, before the smile of her affection, the whole spec- 
tral train of sorrow vanished, and this world of wo, with all its 
cares and miseries and crimes, brightened as by enchantment into 
anticipated paradise ! It might happen that this divine afl[ection 
might be crushed, and that heavenly vision wither into air at the 
hell-endangered pestilence of parental avarice, leaving youth 
and health, and worth and happiness, a sacrifice to its unnatural 
and mercenary caprices. Far am I from saying, that such a 
case would not call for expiation, particularly where the punish- 
ment fell upon the very vice in which the ruin had originated > 
Yet even there perhaps an honourable mind would rather despise 
the mean, unmerited desertion. Oh, I am sure a sensitive mind 



BLAKE V. WILKINS. 133 

would rather droop uncomplaining into the grave, than solicit 
the mockery of a worldly compensation ! But in the case before 
you, is there the slightest ground for supposing any affection? 
Do you believe, if any accident bereft the defendant of her for- 
tune, that her persecutor would be likely to retain his constancy? 
Do you believe that the marriage thus sought to be enforced, 
was one likely to promote morality and virtue ? Do you believe 
that those delicious fruits by which the struggles of social life 
are sweetened, and the anxieties of parental care alleviated, 
were ever once anticipated ? Do you think that such an union 
could exhibit those reciprocities of love and endearments by 
which this tender rite should be consecrated and recommended? 
Do you not rather believe that it originated in avarice — that it 
was promoted by conspiracy — and that it would not perhaps have 
lingered through some months of crime, and then terminated in 
a heartless and disgusting abandonment ? 

Gentlemen, these are the questions which you will discuss in 
your Jury-room. I am not afraid of your decision. Remember I 
ask you for no mitigation of damages. Nothing less than your 
verdict will satisfy me. By that verdict you will sustain the 
dignity of your sex — by that verdict you will uphold the honour 
of the national character — by that verdict you will assure, not 
only the immense multitude of both sexes that thus so unusually 
crowds around you, but the whole rising generation of your coun- 
try. That marriage can never be attended with honour, or 

BLESSED WITH HAPPINESS, IF IT HAS NOT ITS ORIGIN IN MUTUAL AF- 
FECTION. I surrender with confidence my case to your decision. 

[The damages were laid at 5000Z. and the Plaintiff's Counsel were, in the end, 
contented to withdraw a Juror, and let him pay his own Costs.] 



A CHARACTER 



NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE, 



DOWN TO THE PERIOD OF HIS EXILE TO ELBA. 



HE IS FALLEN ! — We may now pause before that splendid pro- 
digy, which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose 
frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. 

Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne, a scep- 
tred hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. 

A mind bold, independent, and decisive — a will, despotic in 
its dictates — an energy that distanced expedition, and a con- 
science pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of 
this extraordinary character — the most extraordinary, perhaps, 
that, in the annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell. 

Flung into life, in the midst of a Revolution, that quickened 
every energy of a people, who acknowledged no superior, he 
commenced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by 
charity ! 

With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, 
he rushed into the lists where rank, and wealth, and genius had 
arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the 
glance of destiny. He knew no motive but interest — he ac- 
knowledged no criterion but success — he worshiped no God but 
ambition, and with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of 
his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did 
not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate : in 
the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the crescent ; for the sake 
of a divorce, he bowed before the Cross : the orphan of St. Louis, 
he became the adopted child of the republic ; and with a pari- 
cidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and the tribune, 
he reared the throne of his despotism. 

134 



NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. 135 

A professed Catholic, he imprisoned the Pope ; a pretended 
patriot, he impoverished the country ; and in the name of Bru- 
tus,* he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the 
diadem of the Caesars ! 

Through this pantomime of his poHcy, fortune played the clown 
to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, 
systems vanished, the wildest theories took the colour of his whim, 
and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed 
places with the rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat as- 
sumed the appearance of victory — his flight from Egypt con- 
firmed his destiny — ruin itself only elevated him to empire. 

But if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendant ; 
decision flashed upon his counsels ; and it was the same to decide 
and to perform. To inferior intellects, his combinations appeared 
perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable ; but, in 
his hands, simplicity marked their developement, and success 
vindicated their adoption. 

His person partook the character of his mind — if the one 
never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. 

Nature had no obstacles that he did not surmount — space no 
opposition that he did not spurn; and whether amid Alpine rocks, 
Arabian sands, or polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, 
and empowered with ubiquity ! The whole continent of Europe 
trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the mira- 
cle of their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his 
performance ; romance assumed the air of history ; nor was there 
aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, 
when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial 
flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity 
became common places in his contemplation ; kings were his 
people — nations were his outposts ; and he disposed of courts, 
and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they 
were the titular dignitaries of the chess-board ! 

Amid all these changes he stood immutable as adamant. It 
mattered little whether in the field or the drawing room — with 
the mob or the levee — wearing the jacobin bonnet or the iron 
crown — banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburgh — 
dictating peace on a raft to the czar of Russia, or contemplating 

* In his hypocritical cant after Liberty, in the commencement of the Revolu- 
tion, he assumed the name of Brutus Proh Pudor I 



136 CHARACTER OF 

defeat at the gallows of Leipsic — he was still the same military 
despot ! 

Cradled in the camp, he was to the last hour the darling of 
the army ; and wlicther in the camp or the cabinet, he never 
forsook a friend or forgot a favour. Of all his soldiers, not one 
abandoned him, till alFection was useless ; and their first stipula- 
tion was for the safety of their favourite. 

They knew well that if he was lavish of them, he was prodi- 
gal of himself; and that if he exposed them to peril, he repaid 
them with plunder. For the soldier, he subsidized every people ; 
to the people he made even pride pay tribute. The victorious 
veteran glittered with his gains ; and the capital, gorgeous with 
the spoils of art, became the miniature metropolis of the universe. 
In this wonderful combination, his affectation of literature must 
not be omitted. The jailor of the press, he affected the patron- 
age of letters — the proscriber of books, he encouraged philoso- 
phy — the persecutor of authors, and the murderer of printers, 
he yet pretended to the protection of learning ! — the assassin of 
Palm, the silencer of De Stael, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, 
he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent 
his academic prize to the philosopher of England.* 

Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such 
an individual consistency, were never united in the same charac- 
ter. A Royalist — A Republican and an Emperor — A Mahome- 
tan — A Catholic and a patron of the Synagogue — A Subaltern 
and a Sovereign — A Traitor and a Tyrant — A Christian and an 
Infidel — he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, im- 
patient, inflexible original — the same mysterious incomprehensi- 
ble self — the man without a model, and without a shadow. 

His fall, like his life, baffled all speculation. In short, his 
whole history was like a dream to the world, and no man can 
tell how or why he was aw^akened from the reverie. 

Such is a faint and feeble picture of Napoleon Buonaparte, 
the first, (and it is to be hoped the last,) Emperor of the 
French. 

That he has done much evil there is little doubt; that he has 
been the origin of much good, there is just as little. Through his 
means, intentional or not, Spain, Portugal, and France have arisen 

* Sir Ilumplircy Duvy was transmitted the first prize of the Academy of 
Scieiicea. 



I 



NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE. 137 

to the blessings of a free constitution ; Superstition has found her 
grave in the ruins of the inquisition ;* and the feudal system, 
with its whole train of tyrannic satellites, has fled for ever. 
Kings may learn from him that their safest study, as well as their 
noblest, is the interest of the people ; the people are taught by 
him that there is no despotism so stupendous against which they 
have not a resource ; and to those who would rise upon the ruins 
of both, he is a living lesson, that if ambition can raise them from 
the lowest station, it can also prostrate them from the highest. 

* What melancholy reflections does not this sentence awaken ! But three years 
have elapsed since it was written, and in that short space all the good effected by 
Napoleon has been erased by the Legitimates, and the most questionable parts of 
his character badly imitated ! — His successors want nothing but his genius. 



SPEECH OF MR. PHILLIPS 

IN THE CASE OF 

BROWNE V. BLAKE: 

FOR CRIM. CON. 

DELIVERED IN DUBLIN ON THE 9th JULY, 1817. 



JVIy Lord and Gentlemen, 

I AM instructed by the plaintiff to lay his case before you, and 
little do I wonder at the great interest which it seems to have 
excited. It is one of those cases which come home to the " busi- 
ness and the bosoms" of mankind — it is not confined to the indi- 
A^iduals concerned — it visits every circle, from the highest to the 
lowest — it alarms the very heart of the community, and commands 
the whole social family to the spot where human nature, pros- 
trated at the bar of public justice, calls aloud for pity and protec- 
tion! On my first addressing a jury upon a subject of this nature, 
I took the high ground to which I deemed myself entitled — I stood 
upon the purity of the national character — I relied upon that chas- 
tity which centuries had made proverbial, and almost drowned the 
cry of individual suffering in the violated reputation of the country. 
Humbled and abashed, I must resign the topic — indignation at the 
novelty of the offence has given way to horror at the frequency 
of its repetition — it is now becoming almost fashionable amongst 
us ; we are importing the follies, and naturalizing the vices of the 
continent ; scarcely a term passes in these courts, during which 
some unabashed adulterer or seducer does not announce himself, 
improving on the odiousness of his offence by the profligacy of his 
justification, and, as it were, struggUng to record by crimes, the de- 
solating progress of our barbarous civilization. Gentlemen, if 
this be suffered to continue, what home shall be safe, what hearth 
shall be sacred, what parent can, for a moment, calculate on the 
of his child, what child shall be secure against the or- 

138 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 139 

phanage that springs from prostitution ; what solitary right, whe- 
ther of life or of liberty, or of property in the land, shall survive 
amongst us, if that hallowed couch which modesty has veiled, and 
love endeared, and religion consecrated, is to be invaded by a 
vulgar and promiscuous libertinism! A time there was when 
that couch was inviolable in Ireland — when conjugal infidelity 
was deemed but an invention — when marriage was considered 
as a sacrament of the heart, and faith and affection sent a min- 
gled flame together from the altar ; are such times to dwindle in- 
to a legend of tradition ? are the dearest rights of man, and the 
holiest ordinances of God, no more to be respected ? Is the mar- 
riage vow to become but the prelude to perjury and prostitution? 
Shall our enjoyments debase themselves into an adulterous par- 
ticipation, and our children propagate an incestuous commu- 
nity ? Hear the case which I am fated to unfold, and then tell me 
whether a single virtue is yet to linger amongst us with impunity: 
whether honour, friendship or hospitality, are to be sacred : 
whether that endearing confidence by which the bitterness of this 
life is sweetened is to become the instrument of a perfidy beyond 
conception ; and whether the protection of the roof, the fraternity 
of the board, the obligations of the altar, and the devotion of 
the heart, are to be so many panders to the hellish abominations 
they should have purified. — Hear the case which must go forth 
to the world, but which I trust in God your verdict will accom- 
pany, to tell that world, that if there was vice enough amongst us 
to commit the crime, there is virtue enough to brand it with an 
indignant punishment. 

Of the plaintitf, Mr. Browne, it is quite impossible but you 
must have heard much — his misfortune has given him sad celeb- 
rity ; and it does seem a peculiar incident to such misfortune, that 
the loss of happiness is almost invariably succeeded by the depri- 
vation of character. As the less guilty murderer will hide the 
corse that may lead to his detection, so does the adulterer, by 
obscuring the reputation of his victim, seek to diminish the moral 
responsibility he had incurred. Mr. Browne undoubtedly forms 
no exception to this system — betrayed by his friend, and aban- 
doned by his wife, his too generous confidence, his too tender love 
has been slanderously perverted into the sources of his calamity. 
Because he could not tyrannize over her whom he adored, he 
was careless — because he could not suspect him in whom he 



140 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

trusted, he was careless ; and crime in the infatuation of its cun- 
ning found its justification even on the virtues of its victim ! I 
am not deterred by the prejudice thus cruelly excited — I appeal 
from the gossiping credulity of scandal to the grave decisions of 
fathers and of husbands ; and I implore of you, as you value the 
blessings of your home, not to countenance the calumny which soli- 
cits a precedent to excuse their spoliation. At the close of the year 
1809, the death of my client's father gave him the inheritance 
of an ample fortune. Of all the joys his prosperity created, 
there was none but yielded to the ecstacy of sharing it with her 
he loved, the daughter of his father's ancient friend, the respect- 
able proprietor of Oran Castle. She was then in the very spring 
of life, and never did the sun of heaven unfold a lovelier blossom 
— her look was beauty and her breath was fragrance — the eye 
that saw her caught a lustre from the vision ; and all the virtues 
seemed to linger round her, like so many spotless spirits enamour- 
ed of her loveliness. 

" Yes, she was good as she was fair, 

None, none on earth above her ; 
As pure in thought as angels are ; 
To see her, was to love her." 

What years of tongueless transport might not her happy husband 
have anticipated ! What one addition could her beauties gain 
to render them all perfect ! In the connubial rapture there was 
only one, and she was blessed with it. A lovely family of infant 
children gave her the consecrated name of mother, and with it 
all that heaven can give of interest to this world's worthlessness. 
Can the mind imagine a more delightful vision than that of such 
a mother, thus young, thus lovely, thus beloved, blessing a hus- 
band's heart, basking in a world's smile ; and while she breathed 
into her little ones, the moral light, showing them that, robed in 
all the light of beauty, it was still possible for their virtues to 
cast it into the shade. Year after year of happiness rolled on, 
and every year but added to their love, a pledge to make it hap- 
pier than the former. Without ambition but her husband's love, 
without one object but her children's happiness, this lovely 
woman, circled in her orbit, all bright, all beauteous in the 
prosperous hour, and if that hour e'er darkened, only beaming 
the brighter and the lovelier. A^Tiat human hand could mar so 
pure a picture? — What punishment could adequately visit its 
violation? 



BROWNE V. BLAKE, 141 

"Oh happy love, where love like this is found ! 
Oh, heartfelt rapture! bliss beyond compare I" 

It was indeed the summer of their lives, and with it came the 
swarm of summer friends, that revel in the sunshine of the hour, 
and vanish with its splendour. — High and honoured in that crowd 
— most gay, most cherished, most professing, stood the defendant, 
Mr. Blake. He was the plaintiff's dearest, fondest friend, to every 
pleasure called, in every case consulted, his day's companion, 
and his evening guest, his constant, trusted, bosom confident, and, 
under guise of all, oh human nature ! he was his fellest, deadliest, 
final enemy ! Here, on the authority of this brief, do I arraign 
him, of having wound himself into my client's intimacy — of hav- 
ing encouraged that intimacy into friendship, of having counter- 
feited a sympathy in his joys and in his sorrows ; and when he 
seemed too pure even for scepticism itself to doubt him, of having, 
under the very sanctity of his roof, perpetrated an adultery the 
most unprecedented and perfidious ! If this be true, can the 
world's wealth defray the penalty of such turpitude ? Mr. 
Browne, Gentlemen, was ignorant of every agricultural pursuit, 
and, unfortunately adopting the advice of his father-in-law, he 
cultivated the amusements of the Curragh. I say unfortunately, 
for his own aflfairs, and by no means in reference to the pursuit 
itself. It is not for me to libel an occupation which the highest, 
and noblest, and most illustrious throughout the empire, covm- 
tenance by their adoption, which fashion and virtue grace by its 
attendance, and in which, peers and legislators and princes are 
not ashamed to appear conspicuous. But if the morality that 
countenances it be doubtful, by what epithet shall we designate 
that which would make it an apology for the most profligate of 
offences ? Even if Mr. Browne's pursuits were ever so erroneous, 
was it for his bosom friend to take advantage of them to ruin 
him ? On this subject, it is sufficient for me to remark, that un- 
der circumstances of prosperity or vicissitudes, was their connu- 
bial happiness ever even remotely clouded 1 In fact, the plaintiff 
disregarded even the amusements that deprived him of her so- 
ciety. He took a house for her in the vicinity of Kildare, furnished 
it with all that luxury could require, and afforded her the greatest 
of all luxuries, that of enjoying and enhancing his most prodigal 
affection. From the hour of their marriage, up to the unfor- 
tunate discovery, they lived on terms of the utmost tenderness ; 
not a word, except one of love ; not an act, except of mutual 



142 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

endearment, passed between them. Now, gentlemen, if this be 
proved to you, here I take my stand, and I say, under no earthly 
circumstances, can a justification of the adulterer be adduced. 
No matter with what dehnquent sophistry he may blaspheme 
through its palliation, God ordained, nature cemented, happiness 
consecrated that celestial union, and it is complicated treason 
against God, and man, and society, to intend its violation. The 
social compact, through every fibre trembles at its consequences ; 
not only policy, but law, not only law, but nature, not only na- 
ture, but religion deprecate and denounce it, — parent and ofif- 
spring, — youth and age, — the dead from the tombs, — the child 
from its cradle, creatures scarce alive, and creatures still un- 
born ; the grandsire shivering on the verge of death ; the infant 
quickening in the mother's womb ; all with one assent re-echo 
God, and execrate adultery ! I say, then, where it is once prov- 
ed that husband and wife live together in a state of happiness, 
no contingency on which the sun can shine, can warrant any 
man in attempting their separation. Did they do so? This is 
imperatively your first consideration. I only hope that all the 
hearts religion has joined together, may have enjoyed the hap- 
piness they did. Their married state was one continued honey 
moon ; and if ever cloud arose to dim it, before love's sigh it fled, 
and left its orb the brighter. Prosperous and wealthy, fortune 
had no chai-ms for Mr. Browne, but as it blessed the object of 
his affections. She made success delightful ; she gave his wealth 
its value. The most splendid equipages — the most costly lux- 
uries, the richest retinue — all that vanity could invent to dazzle 
— all that affection could devise to gratify, were her's, and 
thought too vile for her enjoyment. Great as his fortune was, 
his love outshone it, and it seemed as if fortune was jealous of 
the performance. Proverbially capricious, she withdrew her 
smile, and left him shorn almost of every thing except his love, 
and the fidelity that crowned it. 

The hour of adversity is woman's hour — in the full blaze of 
fortune's rich meridian, her modest beam retires from vulgar no- 
tice ; but when the clouds of wo collect around us, and shades 
and darkness dim the wanderer's path, that chaste and lovely 
light shines forth to cheer him, an emblem and an emanation 
of the heavens ! — It was then her love, her value, and her power 
was visible. No, it is not for the cheerfulness with which she 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 143 

bore the change I prize her — it is not that without a sigh she 
surrendered all the baubles of prosperity — but that she pillowed 
her poor husband's heart, welcomed adversity to make him happy, 
held up her little children as the wealth that no adversity 
could take away ; and when she found his spirit broken and his 
soul dejected, with a more than masculine understanding, retriev- 
ed, in some degree, his desperate fortunes, and saved the httle 
wreck that solaced their retirement. What was such a woman 
worth, I ask you ? If you can stoop to estimate by dross the 
worth of such a creature, give me even a notary's calculation, 
and tell me then what was she worth to him to whom she had 
consecrated the bloom of her youth, the charm of her innocence, 
the splendour of her beauty, the wealth of her tenderness, the 
power of her genius, the treasure of her fidelity ? She, the mo- 
ther of his children, the pulse of his heart, the joy of his pros- 
perity, the solace of his misfortunes — what was she worth to him! 
Fallen as she is, you may still estimate her ; you may see her 
value, even in her ruin. The gem is sullied, the diamond is shiv- 
ered ; but even in its dust you may see the magnificence of its 
material. After this, they retired to Rockville, their seat in 
the county of Galway, where they resided in the most domestic 
manner, on the remnant of their once splendid establishment. 
The butterflies, that in their noon tide fluttered round them, 
vanished at the first breath of their adversity ; but one early 
friend still remained faithful and affectionate, and that was the 
defendant. Mr. Blake is a young gentleman of about eight 
and twenty ; of splendid fortune, polished in his manners, inter- 
esting in his appearance, with many qualities to attach a friend, 
and every quality to fascinate a female. Most willingly do I pay 
the tribute which nature claims for him ; most bitterly do I la- 
ment that he has been so ungrateful to so prodigal a benefactress. 
The more Mr. Browne's fortunes accumulated, the more disin- 
terestedly attached did Mr. Blake appear to him. He shared 
with him his purse, he assisted him with his counsel ; in an affair 
of honour he placed his life and character in his hands — he in- 
troduced his innocent sister, just arrived from an English nun- 
nery, into the family of his friend — he encouraged every re- 
ciprocity of intercourse between the females ; and, to crown all, 
that no possible suspicion might attach to him, he seldom travel- 
led without his domestic chaplain ! Now, if it shall appear that 



144 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

all this was only a screen for his adultery — that he took advan- 
tage of his friend's misfortune to seduce the wife of his bosom — 
that he affected confidence only to betray it — that he perfected 
the wretchedness he pretended to console, and that in the midst of 
poverty he has left his victim, friendless, hopeless, companionless ; 
a husband without a wife, and a father without a child — Gracious 
God ! is it not enough to turn Mercy herself into an executioner! 
You convict for murder — here is the hand that murdered in- 
nocence ! You convict for treason — here is the vilest disloyalty to 
friendship ! You convict for robbery — here is one who plundered 
virtue of her dearest pearl, and dissolved it — even in the bowl 
that hospitality held out to him ! They pretend that he is in- 
nocent ! Oh effrontery the most unblushing ! Oh vilest insult, added 
to the deadliest injury! Oh base, detestable, and damnable hy- 
pocrisy ! Of the final testimony it is true enough their cunning has 
deprived us; but under Providence, I shall pour upon this baseness 
such a flood of light, that I will defy, not the most honourable man 
merely, but the most charitable sceptic, to touch the Holy Evan- 
gelists, and say, by their sanctity, it has not been committed. 
Attend upon me, now, Gentlemen, step by step, and with me re- 
joice, that, no matter how cautious may be the conspiracies of 
guilt, there is a Power above to confound and to discover them. 
On the 27th of last January, Mary Hines, one of the domestics, 
received directions from Mrs. Browne, to have breakfast ready 
very early on the ensuing morning, as the defendant, then on a 
visit at the house, expressed an inclination to go out to hunt. 
She was accordingly brushing down the stairs at a very early 
hour, when she observed the handle of the door stir, and fearing 
the noise had disturbed her, she ran hastily down stairs to avoid 
her displeasure. She remained below about three quarters of 
an hour, when her master's bell ringing violently she hastened 
to answer it. He asked her in some alarm where her mistress 
was 1 naturally enough astonished at such a question at such an 
hour, she said she knew not, but would go down and see whether 
or not she was in the parlour. Mr. Browne, however, had good 
reason to be alarmed, for she was so extremely indisposed going 
to bed at night, that an express stood actually prepared to bring 
medical aid from Galway, unless she appeared better. An un- 
usual depression both of mind and body preyed upon Mrs. Browne 
on the preceding evening. She frequently burst into tears, threw 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 145 

her arms around her husband's neck, saying that she was sure 
another month would separate her for ever from him and her 
dear children. It was no accidental omen. Too surely the warn- 
ing of Providence was upon her. When the maid was going 
down, Mr. Blake appeared at his door totally undressed, and in a 
tone of much confusion desired that his servant should be sent up 
to him. She went down : as she was about to return from her 
ineffectual search, she heard her master's voice in the most vio- 
lent indignation, and almost immediately after Mrs. Browne 
rushed past her into the parlour, and hastily seizing her writing 
desk, desired her instantly to quit the apartment. Gentlemen, I 
request you will bear every syllable of this scene in your recol- 
lection, but most particularly the anxiety about the writing desk. 
You will soon find that there was a cogent reason for it. Little was 
the wonder that Mr. Browne's tone should be that of violence and 
indignation. He had discovered his wife and friend totally un- 
dressed, just as they had escaped from the guilty bed-side where 
they stood in all the shame and horror of their situation ! He 
shouted for her brother, and that miserable brother had the 
agony of witnessing his guilty sister in the bed-room of her para- 
mour, both almost literally in a state of nudity. Blake ! Blake ! 
exclaimed the heart-struck husband, is this the return you have 
made for my hospitality ? Oh, heavens ! what a reproach was 
there ! It was not merely, you have dishonoured my bed — it 
was not merely, you have sacrificed my happiness — it was not 
merely, you have widowed me in my youth, and left me the fa- 
ther of an orphan family — it was not merely, you have violated 
a compact to which all the world swore a tacit veneration — but, 
you — you have done it, my friend, my guest, under the very roof 
barbarians reverence ; where you enjoyed my table, where you 
pledged my happiness ; where you saw her in all the loveliness 
of her virtue, and at the very hour when our little helpless chil- 
dren were wrapt in that repose of which you have for ever 
robbed their miserable parents ! I do confess when I paused here 
in the perusal of these instructions, the very hfe-blood froze 
within my veins. What ! said I, must I not only reveal this guilt ! 
must I not only expose his perfidy ! must I not only brand the 
infidelity of a wife and a mother, but must I, amidst the 
agonies of outraged nature, make the brother the proof of the 
sister's prostitution! Thank God, Gentlemen, I may not be 
T 



146 si'ep:ch in the case of 

obliged to torture you and him and myself, by such instru- 
mentality. I think the proof is full without it, though it must 
add another pang to the soul of the poor plaintiif, because it 
must render it almost impossible that his httle infants are not the 
brood of this adulterous depravity. It will be distinctly proved 
to you by Honoria Brennan, another of the servants, that one 
night, so far back as the May previous to the last-mentioned oc- 
currence, when she was in the act of arranging the beds, she 
saw Mr. Blake come up stairs, look cautiously about him, go to 
Mrs. Browne's bed-room door, and tap at it ; that immediately 
after Mrs. Browne went, with no other covering but her shift, to 
Mr. Blake's bed-chamber, where the guilty parties locked them- 
selves up together. Territied and astonished, the maid retired 
to the servants' apartments, and in about a quarter of an hour af- 
ter she saw Mrs. Browne in the same habiliments return from the 
bed-room of Blake into her husband's. Gentlemen, it was by one 
of those accidents which so often accompany and occasion the 
developement of guilt, that we have arrived at this evidence. 
It was very natural that she did not wish to reveal it ; very 
natural that she did not wish either to expose her mistress, or 
afflict her unconscious master with the recital ; very natural 
that she did not desire to be the instrument of so frightful a dis- 
covery. However, when she found that concealment was out of 
the question ; that this action was actually in progress, and that 
the guilty delinquent was publicly triumphing in the absence of 
proof, and through an herd of slanderous dependants, cruelly 
vilifying the character of his victim ; she sent a friend to Mr. 
Browne, and in his presence, and that gf two others, solemnly 
discovered her melancholy information. Gentlemen, I do entreat 
of you to examine this woman, though she is an uneducated pea- 
sant, with all severity ; because, if she speaks the truth, I think 
you will agree with me, that so horrible a complication of iniqui- 
ty neve^ disgraced the annals of a court of justice. He had just 
risen from the table of his friend — he left his own brother and 
that friend behind him, and even from the very board of his hos- 
pitality he proceeded to the defilement of his bed ! Of mere 
adultery I had heard before. It was bad enough — a breach of 
all law, religion and morality — but, wdiat shall I call this ? — 
that seduced innocence — insulted misfortune — betrayed friend- 
ship — violated hospitality — tore up the foundations of human na 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 147 

ture> and harried its fragments at the violated altar, as if to bury 
religion beneath the ruins of society ! Oh, it is guilt might put a 
Demon to the blush ! 

Does our proof rest here ! No ; though the mind must be scep- 
tical that after this could doubt. A guilty correspondence was 
carried on between the parties, and though its contents were 
destroyed by Mrs. Browne on the morning of the discovery, still 
we shall authenticate the fact beyond suspicion. You shall hear 
it from the very messenger they entrusted — you shall hear 
from him too, that the wife and the adulterer both bound him to 
the utmost secrecy, at once establishing their own collusion and 
their victim's ignorance, proving by the very anxiety for conceal- 
ment, the impossibility of connivance ; so true it is that the con- 
viction of guilt will often proceed even from the stratagem for 
its securit}^. Does our proof rest here '( No ; you shall have it 
from a gentleman of unimpeachable veracity, that the defendant 
himself confessed the discovery in his bed-room — " I will save 
him," said he, " the trouble of proving it ; she was in her shift, 
and I was in my shirt. I know very well a jury will award 
damages against me ; ask Browne will he agree to compromise 
it ; he owes me some money, and I will give him the overplus in 
horses !" Can you imagine any thing more abominable. He se- 
duced from his friend the idol of his soul, and the mother of his 
children, and when he was writhing under the recent wound, 
he deliberately offers him brutes in compensation ! I will not de- 
preciate this cruelty by any comment ; yet the very brute he 
would barter for that unnatural mother, would have lost its life 
rather than desert its offspring. Now, Gentlemen, what rational 
mind but must spurn the asseveration of innocence after this 1 
Why the anxiety about the writing desk 1 Why a clandestine 
correspondence with her husband's friend 1 Why remain, at two 
different periods, for a quarter of an hour together, in a gentle- 
man's bed-chamber, w^ith no other habiliment, at one time, than 
her bed-dress, at another than her shift. Is this customary with 
the married females of this country ? Is this to be a precedent for 
our wives and daughters, sanctioned too by you, their parents 
and their husbands ? Why did he confess that a verdict for 
damages must go against him, and make the offer of that unfeel- 
ing compromise ? — Was it because he was innocent ? The very 
offer was a judgment by default, a distinct, undeniable corrobo- 



148 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

ration of his guilt. Was it that the female character should not 
suffer 1 Could there be a more trumpet-tongued proclamation 
of her criminality ? Are our witnesses suborned 1 Let his army 
of Counsel sift and torture them. Can they prove it ? Oh yes, 
if it be provable. Let them produce her brother — in our hands, 
a damning proof to be sure ; but then, frightful, afflicting, un- 
natural — in theirs, the most consolatory and delightful, the vindi- 
cation of calumniated innocence, and that innocence the inno- 
cence of a sister. Such is the leading outline of our evidence — 
evidence which you will only wonder is so convincing in a case 
whose very nature presupposes the most cautious secrecy. The 
law, indeed, Gentlemen, duly estimating the difficulty of final 
proof in this species of action, has recognized the validity of in- 
ferential evidence, but on that subject his Lordship must direct you. 
Do they rely, then, on the ground of innocency 1 If they do, I 
submit to you, on the authority of the law, that inferential evi- 
dence is quite sufficient ; and on the authority of reason, that in 
this particular case, the inferential testimony amounts to demon- 
stration. Amongst the innumerable calumnies afloat, it has been 
hinted to me indeed, that they may mean to rely upon what 
they denominate the indiscretion of the husband. — The moment 
they have the hardihood to resort to that, they, of course, aban- 
don all denial of delinquency, and even were it fully proved, it 
is then worth your most serious consideration, whether you will 
tolerate such a defence as that. It is in my mind beyond all en- 
durance, that any man should dare to come into a Court of Jus- 
tice, and on the shadowy pretence of what he may term care- 
lessness, ground the most substantial and irreparable injury. 
Against the unmanly principle of conjugal severity, in the name 
of civilized society, I solemnly protest. It is not fitted for the 
meridian, and I hope will never amalgamate itself with the 
manners of this countr3\- — It is the most ungenerous and insulting 
suspicion, reduced into the most unmanly and despotic practice. 

" Let barbarous nations whose inhuman love 
Is wild desire, fierce as the suns they feel ; 
Let Eastern tyrants, from the light of heaven 
Seclude their bosom slaves, meanly possessed 
Of a mere lifeless violated form — 
While those whom love cements in holy faith 
And equal transport, free as nature live, 
Disdaining fear." 

But once establish the principle of this moral and domestic 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 149 

censorship, and then tell me where is it to begin ? Where is it 
to end ? Who shall bound ? Who shall preface it ? By what 
hitherto undiscoverable standard, shall we regulate the shades 
between solemnity and levity? Will you permit this impudent 
espionage upon your households ; upon the hallowed privacy of 
your domestic hours ; and for what purpose 1 Why, that the se- 
ducer and the adulterer may calculate the security of his cold- 
blooded libertinism ! — that he may steal hke an assassin upon 
your hours of relaxation, and convert perhaps your confidence 
into the instrument of your ruin ! If this be once permitted as 
a ground of justification, we may bid farewell at once to all the 
delightful intercourse of social life. Spurning as I do at this odious 
system of organized distrust, suppose the admission made, that 
my client was careless, indiscreet, culpable, if they will, in his 
domestic regulations, is it therefore to be endured, that every 
abandoned burglar should seduce his wife, or violate his daugh- 
ter 1 Is it to be endured, that Mr. Blake, of all men, should rely 
on such an infamous and convenient extenuation? He — his friend, 
his guest, his confidant, he who introduced a spotless sister to 
this attainted intimacy ; shall he say, I associated with you hour- 
ly, I affected your familiarity for many years, I accompanied 
my domesticated minister of religion to your family ; I almost 
naturalized the nearest female relative I had on earth, unsullied 
and unmarried as she was within your household : but — you fool 
— it was only to turn it into a brothel ! Merciful God, will you 
endure him when he tells you thus, that he is on the watch to 
prowl upon the weakness of humanity, and audaciously solicits 
your charter for such libertinism ? 

I have heard it asserted also, that they mean to arraign the 
husband as a conspirator, because in the hour of confidence and 
misfortune he accepted a proffered pecuniary assistance from the 
man he thought his friend. It is true he did do so ; but so, I will 
say, criminally careful was he of his interests that he gave him 
his bond, and made him enter up judgment on that bond, and 
made him issue an execution on that judgment, ready to be 
levied in a day, that, in the wreck of all, the friend of his bosom 
should be at least indemnified. It was my impression, indeed, that 
under a lease of this nature, amongst honourable men, so far from 
any unwarrantable privilege created, there was rather a peculiar 
delicacy incumbent on the donor. I should have thought so still, 



150 SPEECH IN THE CASE OF 

but for a frightful expression of one of the Counsel on the motion, 
by which they endeavoured not to trust a Dublin Jury with this 
issue. — What, exclaimed they, in all the pride of their execrable 
instructions, " poor plaintiff and rich defendant ! Is there nothing 
in that ?" No, if my client's shape does not belie his species, 
there is nothing in that. I braved the assertion as a calumny on 
human nature — I call on you, if such an allegation be repeated, 
to visit it with vindictive and overwhelming damages 1 I would 
appeal, not to this civilized assembly, but to a horde of savages, 
whether it is possible for the most inhuman monster thus to sacri- 
fice to infamy, his character — his wife — his home — his children ! 
In the name of possibility, I deny it ; in the name of humanity, I 
denounce it ; in the name of our common country, and our com- 
mon nature, I implore of the learned Counsel not to promulgate 
such a slander upon both — but I need not do so ; if the seal of 
advocacy should induce them to the attempt, memory would ar- 
ray their unhappy homes before them — their little children 
would lisp its contradiction — their love — their hearts — their 
instinctive feelings as fathers and as husbands, would rebel 
within them, and wither up the horrid blasphemy upon their 
lips. 

They will find it difficult to palliate such turpitude — I am sure 
I find it difficult to aggravate. — It is in itself a hyperbole of 
wickedness. Honour, innocence, religion, friendship — all that is 
sanctified or lovely, or endearing in creation. — Even that hal- 
lowed, social, shall I not say indigenous virtue — that blessed hos- 
pitality — which foreign envy could not deny, or foreign robbery 
despoil — which, when all else had perished, cast a bloom on our 
desolation, flinging its rich foliage over the national ruin, as if to 
hide the monument, while it gave a shelter to the mourner — 
even that withered away before that pestilence ! But what do 
I say ! was virtue merely the victim of this adulterer ? Worse, 
worse — it was his instrument — even on the broken tablet of the 
decalogue did he whet the dagger for his social assassination. — 
What will you say, when I inform you, that a few months be- 
fore, he went deliberately to the baptismal font with the waters 
of life to regenerate the infant that, too well could he avouch it, 
had been born in sin, and he promised to teach it Christianity ! 
And he promised to guard it against " the flesh !" And, lest in- 
finite mercy should overlook the sins of its adulterous father, 



BROWNE V. BLAKE. 151 

seeking to make God his pander, he tried to damn it even with 
the Sacrament ! — See then the horrible atrocity of this case as 
it touches the defendant — but how can you count its miseries as 
attaching to the plaintiff! He has suffered a pang the most 
agonizing to human sensibility — it has been inflicted by his friend, 
and inflicted beneath his roof — it commences at a period which 
casts a doubt on the legitimacy of his children, and, to crown all, 
" upon him a son is born" even since the separation, upon whom 
every shilling of his estates has entailed by settlement ! What 
compensation can reprise so unparalleled a sufferer ? What soli- 
tary consolation is there in reserve for him 1 Is it love ? Alas, 
there was one whom he adored with all the heart's idolatry, and 
she deserted him. Is it friendship ? There was one of all the 
world whom he trusted, and that one betrayed him. Is it socie- 
ty ? The smile of others' happiness appears but the epitaph of 
his own. Is it solitude 1 Can he be alone while memory striking 
on the sepulchre of his heart, calls into existence the spectres of 
the past. Shall he fly for refuge to his " sacred home 1" Every 
object there is eloquent of his ruin ! Shall he seek a mournful 
solace in his children ? Oh, he has no children — there is the lit- 
tle favourite that she nursed, and there — there — even on its 
guileless features — there is the horrid smile of the adulterer ! 

Oh Gentlemen, am I this day only the Counsel of my client ! 
no — no — I am the advocate of humanity — of yourselves — your 
homes — your wives — your families — your little children ; I am 
glad that this case exhibits such atrocity ; unmarked as it is by 
any mitigatory feature, it may stop the frightful advance of this 
calamity ; it will be met now, and marked with vengeance ; if it 
be not, farewell to the virtues of your country ; farewell to all 
confidence between man and man ; farewell to that unsuspicious 
and reciprocal tenderness, without which marriage is but a con- 
secrated curse ; if oaths are to be violated ; laws disregarded ; 
friendship betrayed ; humanity trampled ; national and indi- 
vidual honour stained ; and if a jury of fathers, and of husbands 
will give such miscreancy a passport to their homes, and wives, 
and daughters ; farewell to all that yet remains of Ireland ! But 
I will not cast such a doubt upon the character of my country. 
Against the sneer of the foe, and the scepticism of the foreigner, 
I will still point to the domestic virtues, that no perfidy could 
barter, and no bribery can purchase, that with a Roman usagCi 



152 BROWNE v. BLAKE 

at once embellish and consecrate households, giving to the so- 
ciety of the hearth all the purity of the altar ; that hngering 
alike in the palace and the cottage, are still to be found scatter- 
ed over this land ; the relic of what she vi^as ; the source per- 
haps of what she may be ; the lone, the stately, and magnificent 
memorials, that rearing their majesty amid surrounding ruins 
serve at once as the land-marks of the departed glory, and the 
models by which the future may be erected. 

Preserve those virtues with a vestal fidelity ; mark this day, 
by your verdict, your horror at their profanation, and believe 
me, when the hand which records that verdict shall be dust, and 
the tongue that asks it, traceless in the grave, many a happy 
home will bless its consequences, and many a mother teach her 
little child to hate the impious treason of adultery. 



i 



SPEECH OF MR. PHILLIPS 



AT THE SLIGO COUNTY MEETING. 



On Monday the 10th April, there was a large and respecta- 
ble meeting in the court house, of the gentlemen, clergy, free- 
holders, and other inhabitants of the county of Sligo, for the 
purpose of taking into consideration an address of condolence to 
the king on the death of his royal father, and of congratulation 
to his majesty on his accession to the throne. Wm. Parke Esq. 
high sheriff, in the chair. 

Owen Wynne Esq. moved an address. 

Major O'Hara seconded the motion, 

Charles Phillips Esq. then rose and spoke to the following 
effect : 

I AM happy, sir, in having an opportunity of giving my concur- 
rence both in the sentiment and principle of the proposed ad- 
dress. I think it should meet with the most perfect unanimity. 
The departed monarch deserves, and justly, every tribute which 
posterity can pay him. He was one of the most popular that 
ever swayed the sceptre of these countries. He never forgot his 
early declaration that he gloried in the name of Briton, and 
Britain now reciprocates the sentiment, and glories in the pride 
of his nativity. He was, indeed, a true-born Englishmen — brave, 
generous, benevolent and manly — in the exercise of his sway, 
and the exercise of his virtues so perfectly consistent that it is 
difficult to say whether as a man or sovereign he is most to be 
regretted. He commenced for the Catholic a conciliatory sys- 
tem — he preserved for the Protestant the inviolabihty of the 
constitution — he gave to both a great example in the toleration 
of his principles and the integrity of his practice. The historian 
will dwell with delight upon those topics. He will have little to 
censure and much to commend. He will speak of arts, manu- 
factures, literature encouraged — he will linger long among those 
private virtues which wreathed themselves around his public 
U 1.53 



154 SPEECH AT SLIGO. 

station — which identified his domestic with his magisterial cha- 
racter, and made the father of his family, the father of his people. 
He will not fail to remark how ample, and, at the same time, how 
discriminating was his patronage, and he will truly say, that if the 
pencil of West, directed to the sacred volume by his bounty — if 
the old age of Johnson, cheered and consoled by his royal liberal- 
ity, were to stand alone, they would undeniably attest the purity 
of his taste and the piety of his morals. Attributes, such as these, 
sir, come home to the bosom of every man amongst us — they 
descend from the throne, they mingle with the fire side, they 
command more than majesty often can, not only the admiration 
but the sympathy of mankind. Nor may we forget, independ- 
ent of his most virtuous example in private life, the vast public 
benefits, which, as a king, his reign conferred upon the country — 
the liberty of the press, guaranteed, as far as reason can require 
it, and where restrained, only so restrained as to prevent its run- 
ning into licentiousness — the trial by jury fully defined and firmly 
established — the independence of the bench voluntarily conceded, 
which deprived the executive of a powerful and possible instru- 
ment, and vested the rights and property and privilege of the 
people in the integrity of a now unassailable tribunal. These 
are acts which we should register in our hearts ; they should ca- 
nonize the memory of the monarch ; they made his realm the 
land-mark of European liberty, they made its constitution the 
model for European imitation. Let us not either in our estimate 
of his character forget the complexion of the times in which he 
lived ; times of portent and prodigy, enough to perplex the 
council of the wise, and daunt the valour of the warrior ; — in 
such extremities, experience becomes an infant, and calculation 
a contingency. From the terrific chaos of the French revolution, 
a comet rose and blazed athwart our hemisphere, too splendid 
not to allure, too ominous not to intimidate, too rapid and too 
eccentric for human speculation. The whole continent became 
absorbed in wonder ; kings and statesmen and sages fell down 
and worshipped, and the political orbs, which had hitherto circled 
in harmony and peace, hurried from our system into the train of 
its conflagration. There was no order in politics ; no consistency 
in morals ; no steadfastness in religion. 

Vice prevailed, and impious men bore sway. 



SPEECH AT SLIGO. 155 

Upon the tottering throne the hydra of democracy sat grinning ; 
upon the ruined altar a wi-etched prostitute received devotion, 
and waved in mockery the burning cross over the prostrate 
murmurs of the new philosophy ! All Europe appeared spell- 
bound ; nor like a vulgar spell did it perish in the waters. It 
crossed the channel. There were not wanting in England abun- 
dance of anarchists to denounce the king, and of infidels to ab- 
jure the Deity ; turbulent demagogues who made the abused 
name of freedom the pretence for their own factious selfishness ; 
atheists looking to be worshipped, republicans looking to be 
crowned ; the nobles of the land were proscribed by anticipation, 
and their property partitioned by the disinterested patriotism of 
these Agrarian speculators. What do you think it was, during 
that awful crisis, which saved England from the hellish Saturnalia 
which inverted France 1 Was it the prophetic inspiration of Mr. 
Burke 1 The uncertain adhesion of a standing army ? The 
precarious principles of our navy at the Nore ? Or the transient 
resources of a paper currency ? Sir, I believe in my soul this 
empire owed its salvation during that storm to the personal cha- 
racter of the departed sovereign. When universal warfare was 
fulminated against monarchy, England naturally turned to its 
representative at home: and what did she find him? Frugal, 
moral, humane, religious, benevolent, domestic ; a good father, 
a good husband, a good man, rendered the crown she gave him 
still more loyal, and not only preserving but purifying the trusts 
she had confided. She looked to his court : and did her morality 
blush at the splendid debauchery of a Versailles ? Did her faith 
revolt at the gloomy fanaticism of an Escurial 1 Far from it. 
She saw the dignity which testified her sway tempered by the 
purity which characterised her worship ; she saw her diadem 
glowing with the gems of empire, but those gems were illumined 
by a ray from the altar ; she saw that aloft on his triumphal 
chariot her monarch needed not the memento of the republican ; 
he never for a moment forgot that " he was a man." Sir, it 
would have been a lot above the condition of humanity, if his 
measures had not sometimes been impeached by party. But in 
all the conflicts of public opinion as to their policy, who ever 
heard an aspersion cast upon his motives ? It is very true, had 
he followed other councils, events might have been different, but 
it is also well worth while to notice, would our situation have 



156 SPEECH AT SLIGO. 

been improved 1 Would Great Britain revolutionised, have 
given her people purer morals, more upright tribunals, more 
impartial justice, or more " perfect freedom" than they now par- 
ticipate 1 Did the murder of her prelates, her nobility and her 
king, followed by twenty years of military sway, procure for 
France, more popular privileges than those of which we have 
been in undisturbed possession ? Was the chance of some pro- 
blematical improvement worth the contingencies ? Should we 
surrrender a present practical reality for the fantastic scheme 
of some Utopian theorist 1 Ought we to confound a creation 
so regular and so lovely, for the visionary paradise that chaos 
might reveal to us ? The experiment has been tried, and what 
has been the consequence 1 Look to the continent at this mo- 
ment. Its unsettled governments ! its perturbed spirit ! its pes- 
tilential doctrines ! Go to the tomb of Kotzebue ; knock at the 
cemetry of the Bourbons ; providentially I have not to refer to 
your own murdered cabinet : you will find there how much 
easier it is to desolate than to create; how possible it is to 
ruin ; how almost impracticable to restore. 

Even in a neighbouring county in your own island, look at 
the enormous temptation which has been offered in vain to its im- 
poverished peasantry to induce them — to what 1 Why merely 
to surrender a murderous assassin well known to have been one 
of a numerous association. Do you think such principles are 
natural to our people ? Do you not think they are the result of 
system? Which do you believe — that such a sickening coincidence 
both at home and abroad is miraculous or premeditated ? Sir, 
there is but one solution. You may depend upon it, the gulf 
is not yet closed whence the dreadful doctrines of treason, and 
assassination, and infidelity have issued. Men's minds are still 
feverish and delirious, and whether they nickname the fever il- 
lumination in Germany, liberality in France, radicalism in Eng- 
land, or by some more vulgar and unmeaning epithet at home, 
they are all children of the same parent ; all so many common 
and convulsive indications of the internal vitality of the revolu- 
tionary volcano. Sir, I am not now to learn that those opinions 
are unpalatable to certain ultra patriots of the hour. I declared 
them before, and I now reiterate them still more emphatically, 
because they have expressed a very imprudent surprise that 
such opinions should proceed from me. Sir, if they mean to 



SPEECH AT SLIGO. 157 

insinuate that I ever approved the practice or professed the 
principles of their infamous fraternity, they insinuate a base, 
slanderous, and malignant falsehood. I hold it to be the bounden 
duty of every honest man who ever pronounced a liberal opinion, 
to come forward and declare his abhorrence of such doctrines. 
What ! because I am liberal, must I become rebellious ? because 
I am tolerant, must I renounce my creed 1 They have mistaken 
me very much. Though 1 would approve of any rational, prac- 
ticable reform ; though I would go very far upon the road of 
liberality, I would not move for either, no, not one single inch, 
unless loyalty and religion were to bear me company. I know not 
what they mean by their " Radical Reform," unless they mean 
to uproot the Throne, the Altar, and the State. I do not believe 
their chimera of annual parliaments and universal suffrage. 
I prefer a legislature comprising the wealth, the talent, and the 
education of the realm, to a radical directory of shoeless cobblers, 
andshopless apothecaries. I fly for protection to my king, and 
for consolation to my God, from the lawless, creedless, murderous, 
blasphemous banditti, who postpone them both to the putrid car- 
case of an outlawed infidel. Denounce me if you choose. 1 
would sooner die to-morrow beneath the dagger of your hate, 
than live in the infectious leprosy of your friendship. My fellow- 
countrymen, it is high time to pause. Our very virtues, by ex- 
cess, may become vices. Let us aid the aggrieved, but let us 
not abet the assassin ; let us tolerate the sectarian, not counte- 
nance the infidel; let us promulgate, if we can, an universal 
good, without shaking the basis of our social system, or the blessed 
foundation of our eternal hope. My own sentiments, as to the 
most unlimited toleration of all sects of Christians, you are not now, 
for the first time, to be made acquainted with. 1 know that 
many good men, and many much abler men, dissent from me ; 
and while I give them full credit on the score of sincerity, I 
only seek the same concession for myself. I would open the 
gates of constitutional preferment to all my fellow subjects of 
every religious creed, wide as I expand to them the affections 
of my own heart. It is in my mind but fair, that he who pro- 
tects a state should receive a reciprocity of privileges; that 
no man should be made familiar with its burthens, and at the 
same time be told he must remain a stranger to its benefits. 
This is an humble but conscientious opinion, given freely but not 



158 SPEECH AT SLIGO. 

servilely — seeking to make others free, I will not submit to be- 
come a slave myself, or compromise one particle of self-respect. 
Nay, more, Sir, though I would give, and give voluntarily^ every 
liberal enfranchisement, I would not withdraw one prop — I 
would not deface even one useless ornament on the porch of the 
constitution ; it has been founded by wisdom, defended by valour, 
consecrated by years, and cemented by the purest blood of pa- 
triotism : at every step beneath its sacred dome, we meet some 
holy relic, some sublime memorial ; the tombs of the heroes, and 
sages, and martyrs of our history ! the graves of the Russels and 
the Sydneys ; the statues of the Hardwicks and the Hales ; the 
sainted relics of departed piety ; the table of the laws to which 
king and people are alike responsible ; the eternal altar on whose 
divine commandments all those laws are founded ; sublime, hal- 
lowed, invaluable treasures! unimpaired and imperishable be 
the temple that protects them ! In the fullness of my heart I 
say to it, "Esto perpetua," may no political Marius ever rest upon 
its ruins. Sir, in reference to the congratulatory part of your 
address, I cannot wish the august personage to whom it refers a 
more auspicious wish than that he may follov\^ implicitly the 
footsteps of his father. — These ways are " ways of pleasantness," 
these paths are " paths of peace." I hope his reign may be as 
happy as his Regency has been victorious, and that in the plen- 
itude of power, he will remember the country forgot not him 
when that power was very distant. These are not times, how- 
ever, to be either too exigent or too unreasonable ; the atheist 
meets us in our noon-day walk ; the assassin waits not for the 
night's concealment ; all ranks, and sects, and parties should 
unite ; all that is sacred in the eye of every christian, dear to 
every parent, and valuable to every man, is menaced with anni- 
hilation ; every cause of difference, whether real or imaginary, 
should be now suspended, until the national shout of " fear God, 
honour the king," drowns the warwhoop of impiety and treason : 
if we are to live, my countrymen, let us live in the security of 
laws ; if we are to die, let us die in the consolations of religion. 



SPEECH OF MR. PHILLIPS 

DELIVERED 



AT THE ANiNUAL MEETING OF THE BRITISH AND FOREIGN AUXILIARY 
BIBLE SOCIETY, LONDON. 



Although I have not had the honour either of -proposing or 
seconding any of your Resolutions, still, as a native of that 
country so pointedly alluded to in your report, I hope I may be 
indulged in a few observations. The crisis in which we are 
placed is, I hope, a sufficient apology in itself for any intrusion ; 
but I find such apology is rendered more than unnecessary by 
the courtesy of this reception. Indeed, my Lord, when we see 
omens which are every day arising — when we see blasphemy 
openly avowed — when we see the Scriptures audaciously ridi- 
culed — when, in this Christian Monarchy, the den of the repub- 
lican and the deist yawns for the unwary in your most public 
thoroughfares — when marts are ostentatiously opened, where 
the moral poison may be purchased, whose subtle venom enters 
the very soul — when infidelity has become an article of com- 
merce, and man's perdition may be cheapened at the stall of 
every pedlar — no friend of society should continue silent — it is 
no longer a question of political privilege — of sectarian contro- 
versy — of theological discussion ; — it is become a question, whe- 
ther Christianity itself shall stand, or whether we shall let go 
the firm anchor of our faith, and drift without chart, or helm, 
or compass, into the shoreless ocean of impiety and blood ! I 
despise as much as any man the whine of bigotry — I will go as 
far as any man for rational liberty, but 1 will not depose my God 
to defy the infidel, or tear in pieces the charter of the State, and 
grope for a constituiion amongst the murky pigeon-holes of 
every creedless, lawless, infuriated regicide. When I saw, the 
other day, my Lord, the chief bacchanal of their orgies — the 
man with whom the Apostles were cheats, and the Prophets liars, 

151) 



160 SPEECH AT LONDON. 

and Jesus an imposter, on his memorable trial, withering hour 
after hour with the most horrid blasphemies — surrounded by the 
votaries of every sect, and the heads of every faith — the Chris- 
tian Archbishop — the Jewish Rabbi — the men most eminent for 
their piety and their learning, whom he had purposely collected 
to hear his infidel ridicule of all they reverenced — when I saw 
him raise the Holy Bible in one hand, and the Age of reason in 
the other, as it were confronting the Almighty with a rebel worm, 
till the pious Judge grew pale, and the patient Jury interposed, 
and the self-convicted wretch himself, after having raved away 
all his original impiety, was reduced into a mere machine, for 
the re-production of the ribald blasphemy of others — I could not 
help exclairning, " Infatuated man — if all your impracticable 
madness could be realized, what would you give us in exchange 
for our establishment 1 What would you substitute for that just 
tribunal — for whom would you displace that independent Judge 
and that impartial Jury 1 — Would you really burn the Gospel 
and erase the statutes, for the dreadful equivalent of the crucifix 
and the guillotine !" Indeed, if I was asked for a practical pa- 
negyric on our Constitution, I would adduce the very trial of that 
criminal — and if the legal annals of any country upon earth 
furnished an instance, not merely of such justice, but of such pa- 
tience, and forbearance, such almost culpable indulgence, I 
would concede to him the triumph. I hope, too, in what I say, I 
shall not be considered as forsaking that illustrious example — I 
hope I am above an insult on any man in his situation — perhaps, 
had I the power, I would follow the example further than I 
ought — perhaps I would even humble him into an evidence of 
the very spirit he spurned — and as our creed was reviled in his 
person, and vindicated in his conviction, so I would give it its 
noblest triumph in his sentence, and merely consign him to the 
punishment of its mercy. 

But, indeed, my Lord, the fate of this half infidel, half trading 
martyr, matters very little in comparison of that of the thousands 
he ha,s corrupted. He has literally disseminated a moral plague, 
against which even the nation's quarantine can scarce avail 
us. It has poisoned the fresh blood of infancy — it has disheart- 
ened the last hope of age — if his own account of its circulation 
be correct, hundreds of thousands must be this instant tainted 
with the infectious venom, whose sting dies not with the destruc- 



SPEECH AT LONDON. 161 

tion of the body. Imagine not because the pestilence smites 
not at once, that its fataUty is less certain — imagine not be- 
cause the lower orders are the earliest victims, that the most 
elevated will not suffer in their turn ; the most mortal chillness 
begins at the extremities, and you may depend upon it, nothing 
but time and apathy are wanting to change this healthful land 
into a charnel-house, where murder, anarchy, and prostitution, 
and the whole hell-brood of infidelity, will quaff the heart's 
blood of the consecrated and the noble. My Lord, I am the 
more indignant at these designs, because they are sought to be 
concealed in the disguise of liberty. It is the duty of every real 
friend to liberty to tear the mask from the fiend who has usurped it. 
No, no, this is not our Island Goddess, bearing the mountain 
freshness on her cheeks, and scattering the valley's bounty from 
her hand, known by the lights that herald her fair presence, the 
peaceful virtues that attend her path, and the long blaze of 
glory that lingers in her trian — it is a demon, speaking fair in- 
deed — tempting our faith with airy hopes and visionary realms, 
but even within the foldings of its mantle, hiding the bloody 
symbol of its purpose. Hear not its sophistry ; guard your 
child against it ; draw round your homes, the consecrated circle 
which it dare not enter. You will find an amulet in the religion 
of your country — it is the great mound raised by the Almighty 
for the protection of humanity — it stands between you and the 
lava of human passions ; and oh, believe me, if you wait tamely 
by, while it is basely undermined, the fiery deluge will roll on, 
before which all that you hold dear, or venerable, or sacred will 
wither into ashes. Believe no one who tells you that the friends 
of freedom are now, or ever were, the enemies of religion. They 
know too well that rebellion against God cannot prove the basis 
of government for man, and that the loftiest structure impiety 
can raise is but the Babel monument of its impotence, and its 
pride, mocking the builders with a moment's strength, and then 
covering them with inevitable confusion. Do you want an ex- 
ample ? — only look to France. The microscopic vision of your 
rabble blasphemers has not sight enough to contemplate the 
mighty minds which commenced her revolution. The wit — the 
sage — the orator — the hero — the whole family of genius furnished 
forth their treasures, and gave them nobly to the nation's exigence; 
they had great provocation — they had a glorious cause — they 
X 



162 SPEECH AT LONDON. 

had all that human potency could give them. But they relied 
too much upon this human potency — they abjured their God, and, 
as a natural consequence, they murdered their king — they culled 
their polluted deities from the brothel, and the fall of the idol 
extinguished the flame of the altar. — They crowded the scaffold 
with all their country held of genius or of virtue, and when the 
peerage and the prelacy were exhausted, the mob-executioner 
of to-day became the mob-victim of to-morrow. No sex was 
spared — no age respected — no suffering pitied : and all this they 
did in the sacred name of liberty, though in the deluge of human 
blood, they left not a mountain top for the ark of liberty to rest 
on. But Providence was neither " dead nor sleeping." It mat- 
tered not that for a moment their impiety seemed to prosper — 
that victory panted after their ensanguined banners — that as 
their insatiate eagle soared against the sun, he seemed but to 
replume his wing and to renew his vision — it was only for a 
moment ; and you see at last that in the very banquet of their 
triumph, the Almighty's vengeance blazed upon the wall, and their 
diadem fell from the brow of the idolater. 

My Lord, I will not abjure the altar, the throne, and the con- 
stitution for the bloody tinsel of this revolutionary pantomine. 
I prefer my God, to the impious democracy of their pantheon. — 
I will not desert my king for the political equality of their pan- 
demonium. I must see some better authority than the Fleet- 
street temple, before I forego the principles which I imbibed in 
my youth, and to which I look forward as the consolation of my 
age ; those all-protecting principles which at once guard, and 
consecrate, and sweeten the social intercourse — which give life, 
happiness ; and death, hope ; which constitute man's purity his 
best protection, placing the infant's cradle and the female's couch 
beneath the sacred shelter of the national morality. Neither 
Mr. Paine or Mr. Palmer, nor all the venom-breathing brood, 
shall swindle from me the book where I have learned these pre- 
cepts. — In despite of all their scoff, and scorn, and menacing, I 
say, of the sacred volume they would obliterate, it is a book of 
facts, as well authenticated as any heathen history — a book of 
miracles, incontestibly avouched — a book of prophecy, confirmed 
by past as well as present fulfilment — a book of poetry, pure 
and natural, and elevated even to inspiration — a book of morals, 
such as human wisdom never framed for the perfection of human 



SPEECH AT LONDON. 163 

happiness. My Lord, I will abide by the precepts, admire the 
beauty, revere the mysteries, and, as far as in me lies, practise the 
mandates of this sacred volume ; and should the ridicule of earth, 
and the blasphemy of hell assail me, I shall console myself by the 
contemplation of those blessed spirits, who, in the same holy cause 
have toiled, and shone, and suffered. In the " goodly fellowship 
of the saints" — in the "noble army of the martyrs" — in the 
society of the great, and good, and wise of every nation ; if my 
sinfulness be not cleansed, and my darkness illuminated, at least 
my pretentionless submission may be excused. If I err with 
the luminaries I have chosen for my guides, I confess myself 
captivated by the loveliness of their aberrations. If they err, 
it is in a heavenly region — if they wander, it is in fields of 
light — if they aspire, it is at all events a glorious daring ; and 
rather than sink with infidelity into the dust, I am content to 
cheat myself with their vision of eternity. It may indeed be 
nothing but delusion, but then I err with the disciples of philo- 
sophy and of virtue — with men who have drank deep at the 
fountain of human knowledge, but who dissolved not the pearl 
of their salvation in the draught. I err with Bacon, the great 
Bacon — the great confidant of nature, fraught with all the 
learning of the past, and almost prescient of the future ; yet 
too wise not to know his weakness, and too philosophic not to 
feel his ignorance. I err with Milton, rising on an angel's wing 
to heaven, and like the bird of morn, soaring out of light, amid 
the music of his grateful piety. I err with Locke, whose pure 
philosophy only taught him to adore its source, whose warm 
love of genuine liberty was never chilled into rebellion with 
its author. I err with Newton, whose star-like spirit shot 
athwart the darkness of the sphere, too soon to re-ascend to the 
home of his nativity. With men like these, my Lord, I shall 
remain in error, nor shall I desert those errors even for the 
drunken death-bed of a Paine, or the delirious war-whoop of 
the surviving fiends, who would erect his altar on the ruins of 
society. In my opinion it is difiicult to say, whether their tenets 
are more ludicrous, or more detestable. They will not obey the 
King, or the Prince, or the Parliament, or the Constitution, but 
they will obey Anarchy. They will not believe in the Prophets — 
in Moses — in the Apostles — in Christ — but they believe Tom 
Paine ! With no government but confusion, and no creed but 



164 SPEECH AT LONDON, 

scepticism, I believe, in my soul, they would abjure the one if it 
became legitimate, and rebel against the other if it was once 
established. — Holding, my Lord, opinions such as these, I could 
consider myself culpable, if, at such a crisis, I did not declare 
them. A lover of my country, 1 yet draw a line between patri- 
otism and rebellion. A warm friend to liberty of conscience, I 
will not confound toleration with infidelity. With all its ambi- 
guity, I shall die in the doctrines of the Christian faith : and 
with all its errors, I am contented to live under the glorious 
safeguards of the British Constitution. 



LETTER OF MR. PHILLIPS 

TO THE KING. 



Sire, — When I presume to address you on the subject which 
afflicts and agitates the country, I do so with the most profound 
sentiments of respect and loyalty. But I am no flatterer. I 
wish well to your illustrious house, and therefore address you in 
the tone of simple truth — the interests of the King and Queen 
are identified, and her majesty's advocate must be yours. The 
degradation of any branch of your family, must, in some degree, 
compromise the dignity of all, and be assured there is as much 
danger as discredit in familiarizing the public eye to such a 
spectacle. I have no doubt that the present exhibition is not your 
royal wish; I have no doubt it is the work of wily sycophants 
and slanderers, who have persuaded you of what they know to 
be false, in the base hope that it may turn out to be profitable. 
With the view, then, of warning you against interested hypo- 
crisy, and of giving to your heart its natural humane and noble 
inclination, I invoke your attention to the situation of your per- 
secuted consort ! I implore of you to consider whether it would 
not be for the safety of the state, for the tranquillity of the coun- 
try, for the honour of your house, and for the interests alike of 
royalty and humanity, that an helpless female should be per- 
naitted to pass in peace the few remaining years which unmerited 
misery has spared to her. 

It is now. Sire, about five and twenty years since her majesty 
landed on the shores of England — a princess by birth — a queen 
by marriage — the relative of kings — and the daughter and the 
sister of a hero. She was then young — direct from the indul- 
gence of a paternal court — the blessing of her aged parents, of 
whom she was the hope and stay — and happiness shone brightly 
o'er her ; her Ufe had been all sunshine — time for her had only 
trod on flowers ; and if the visions which endear, and decorate, 
and hallow home, were vanished for ever, still did she resign 

165 



166 LETTER TO THE KING. 

them for the sacred name of wife, and sworn affection of a royal 
husband, and the allegiance of a glorious and gallant people. 
She was no more to see her noble father's hand unhelm the 
warrior's brow to fondle over his child — no more for her a mo- 
ther's tongue delighted as it taught: that ear which never heard 
a strain, that eye which never opened on a scene, but those of 
careless, crimeless, cloudless infancy, was now about to change 
its dulcet tones and fairy visions for the accent and the country 
of the stranger. But she had heard the character of Britons — 
she knew that chivalry and courage co-existed — she knew that 
where the brave man and the freeman dwelt, the very name of 
woman bore a charmed sway ; and where the voice of England 
echoed your royal pledge, to " love and worship, and cleave to 
her alone," she but looked upon your Sire's example, and your 
nation's annals, and was satisfied. — Pause and contemplate her 
enviable station at the hour of these unhappy nuptials ! The 
created world could scarcely exhibit a more interesting spectacle. 
There was no earthly bliss of which she was not either in the pos- 
session or the expectancy. Royal alike by birth and alliance — 
honoured as the choice of England's heir, reputed the most ac- 
complished gentleman in Europe — her reputation spotless as the 
unfallen snow — her approach heralded by a people's prayer, and 
her footsteps obliterated by an obsequious nobility — her youth, 
like the lovely season which it typified, one crowded garland of rich 
and fragrant blossoms, refreshing every eye with present beauty, 
and filling every heart with promised benefits ! — No wonder that 
she feared no famine in that spring-tide of her happiness — no 
wonder that her speech was rapture, and her step was buoyancy ! 
She was the darling of parents' hearts; a kingdom was her 
dower — her very glance, like the sun of heaven, diffused light, 
and warmth, and luxury around it : in her public hour, fortune 
concentrated all its rays upon her ; and when she shrunk from its 
too radiant noon, it was within the shelter of a husband's love, 
which God and nature, and duty and morality, assured her un- 
reluctant faith should be eternal. Such was she then — all joy 
and hope, and generous credulity ; the credulity that springs from 
honour and from innocence. And who could blame it 1 You 
had a world to choose from, and she was your selection — your ages 
were compatible — your births were equal — you had drawn her 
from the house where she was honourable and happy — you had 



LETTER TO THE KING. 107 

a prodigal allowance showered on you by the people — you had 
bowed your anointed head before the altar, and sworn by its 
majesty to cherish and protect her ; and this you did in the pre- 
sence of that moral nation from whom you hold the crown, and 
in the face of that church of which you are the guardian. The 
ties which bound you were of no ordinary texture — you stood 
not in the situation of some secluded profligate, whose brutal 
satiety might leave its victim to a death of solitude, where no eye 
could see, nor echo tell the quiverings of agony. Your elevation 
was too luminous and too lofty to be overlooked, and she, who 
confided with a vestal's faith and a virgin's purity in your ho- 
nour and your morals, had a corroborative pledge in that publi- 
city, which could not leave her to suffer or be sinned against in 
secret. All the calculations of her reason, all evidence of her ex- 
perience, combined their confirmation. Her own paternal home 
was purity itself, and yours might have bound republicanism 
to royalty ; it would have been little less than treason to have 
doubted you ; and, oh ! she was right to brush away the painted 
vermin that infest a court, who would have withered up her 
youthful heart with the wild errors of your ripe minority ! Oh, 
she was right to trust " Fair England's" heir, and weigh but as 
a breath-blown grain of dust, a thousand follies and a thousand 
faults balanced against the conscience of her husband. She did 
confide — and what has been the consequence ? 

History must record it. Sire, when the brightest gem in your 
diadem shall have mouldered, that this young, confiding, inexpe- 
rienced creature had scarcely heard the last congratulatory ad- 
dress upon her marriage, when she was exiled from her husband's 
bed, banished from her husband's society, and abandoned to the 
pollution of every slanderous sycophant who chose to crawl over 
the ruin 1 Merciful God ! was it meet to leave a human being 
so situated, with all her passions excited and inflamed, to the 
impulses of such abandonment 1 Was it meet thus to subject 
her inexperienced youth to the scorpion sting of exasperated 
pride, and all its incidental natural temptations? Was it right 
to fling the shadow of a husband's frown upon the then unsullied 
snow of her reputation ? Up to the blight of that all-withering 
hour no human tongue dared to asperse her character. The 
sun of patronage was not then strong enough to quicken into life 
the serpent brood of slanderers : no starveling aliens, no hungry 



168 LETTER TO THE KING. 

tribe of local expectants, then hoping to fatten upon the offals of 
the royal reputation. She was not long enough in widowhood, 
to give the spy and the perjurer a colour for their inventions. 
The peculiarities of the foreigner ; the weakness of the female — 
the natural vivacity of youthful innocence, could not then be 
tortured into " demonstrations strong ;" for you, yourself, in your 
recorded letter, had left her purity not only unimpeached, but 
unsuspected. That invaluable letter, the living document of 
your separation, gives us the only reason for your exile — that your 
" inclinations," were not in your power ! That, Sire, and that 
alone, was the terrific reason which you gave your consort for 
this heart-rending degradation. Perhaps they were not ; but give 
me leave to ask, are not the obligations of religion independent of 
us 1 Has any man the right to square its solemnities according 
to his rude caprices ? Am I, your lowly subject, to understand 
that I may kneel before the throne of God, and promise conjugal 
fideUty till death, and self-absolve myself, whatever moment it 
suits my " inclination ?" Not so will that mitred bench, who see 
her majesty arraigned before them, read to you this ceremony. 
They will tell you it is the most solemn ordinance of man — conse- 
crated by the approving presence of our Saviour — acknowledged 
by the whole civilized community — the source of life's purest 
pleasures, and of death's happiest consolations — the rich fountain 
of our life and being, whose draught not only purifies existence, 
but causes man to live in his posterity ; — they will tell you that it 
cannot perish by " inclination," but by crime ; and that if there is 
any difference between the prince and the peasant who invoke 
its obligation, it is the more enlarged duty entailed upon him, to 
whom the Almighty has vouchsafed the influence of an example. 
Thus, then, within one year after her marriage, was she flung, 
" like a loathsome weed," upon the world, no cause assigned ex- 
cept your loathing incUnation ! It mattered nothing, that for you 
she had surrendered all her worldly prospects — that she had left 
her home, her parents and her country — that she had confided 
in the honour of a prince, and the heart of a man, and the faith 
of a christian; she had, it seems, in one little year, "outlived 
your liking," and the poor, abandoned, branded, heart-rent out- 
cast, must bear it all in silence, for — she was a defenceless woman , 
and a stranger. Let any man of ordinary feeling think on her 
situation at this trying crisis, and say he does not feel his heart's 



LETTER TO THE KING. 169 

blood boil within him ! Poor unfortunate ! who could have en- 
vied her salaried shame, and her royal humiliation ? The lowest 
peasant in her reversionary realm was happy in the comparison. 
The parents that loved her were far, far away — the friends of 
her youth were in another land — she was alone, and he who 
should have rushed between her and the bolt of heaven, left her 
exposed to a rude world's caprices. And yet she lived, and lived 
without a murmur ; her tears were silent — her sighs were lonely ; 
and when you, perhaps, in the rich blaze of earth's magnificence, 
forgot that such a wretch existed, no reproach of her's awoke 
your slumbering memory. Perhaps she cherished the visionary 
hope that the babe whose " perilous infancy" she cradled, might 
one day be her hapless mother's advocate ! How fondly did she 
trace each faint resemblance ! Each little casual paternal 
smile, which played upon the features of that child, and might 
some distant day be her redemption ! How, as it lisped the 
sacred name of father, did she hope its innocent infant tone might 
yet awake within that father's breast some fond association ! 
Oh, sacred fancies ! Oh, sweet and solemn visions of a mother 
— who but must hallow thee ! Blest be the day-dream that be- 
guiles her heart, and robes each cloud that hovers o'er her child 
in airy colours of that heart's creation ! Too soon life's wintry 
whirlwind must come to sweep the prismed vapour into nothing. 
Thus, Sire, for many and many a heavy year did your desert- 
ed Queen beguile her solitude. Meanwhile for you a flattering 
world assumed its harlot smiles — the ready lie denied your errors 
— the villain courtier deified each act, which in an humble man 
was merely duty ; and mid the din of pomp, and mirth, and revel- 
ry, if remorse spoke, 'twas inarticulate. Believe me, Sire, when 
all the tongues that flattered you are mute, and all the gaudy 
pageants that deceived you are not even a shadow, an awful 
voice will ask in thunder, did your poor wife deserve this treat- 
ment, merely from some distaste of " inclination ?" It must be 
answered. Did not the altar's vow demand a strict fidelity, and 
was it not a solemn and a sworn duty, " for better and for worse," 
to watch and tend her — correct her waywardness by gentle 
chiding and fling the fondness of a husband's love between 
her errors and the world 1 [t must be answered, where the 
poorest rag upon the poorest beggar in your realm, shall have 
the splendour of a coronation garment. 
Y 



170 LETTER TO THE KING. 

Sad, alas ! were these sorrows of her solitude — but sad as they 
were, they were but in their infancy. The first blow passed — 
a second and severer followed. The darling child, over whose 
couch she shed her silent tear — upon whose head she poured her 
daily benediction — in whose infant smile she lived, and moved, 
and had her being, was torn away, and in the mother's sweet 
endearments she could no longer lose the miseries of the wife. 
Her father, and her laurelled brother too, upon the field of battle, 
sealed a life of glory, happy in a soldier's death, far happier that 
this dreadful day was spared them! Her sole surviving parent 
followed soon, and though they left her almost alone on earth, 
yet how could she regret them? she has at least the bitter con- 
solation, that their poor child's miseries did not break their hearts. 
Oh, miserable woman, made to rejoice over the very grave of 
her kindred, in mournful gratitude that their hearts are marble. 
During a long probation of exile and wo, bereft of parents, 
country, child and husband, she had one solace still — her character 
was unblemished. — By a refinement upon cruelty, even that con- 
solation was denied her. Twice had she to undergo the inquisition 
of a secret trial, originating in foul conspiracy, and ending in com- 
plete acquittal. The charity of her nature was made the source 
of crime — the peculiarities inseparable from her birth were made 
the ground of accusation — her very servants were questioned 
whether every thought, and word, and look, and gesture, and visit, 
were not so many overt acts of adultery ; and when her most sa- 
cred moments had been heartlessly explored, the tardy verdict 
which freed her from the guilt, could not absolve her from the 
humiliating consciousness of the accusation. Your gracious 
father, indeed, with a benevolence of heart more royal than his 
royalty, interposed his arm between innocence and punishment ; 
for punishment it was, most deep and grievous, to meet discoun- 
tenance from all your family, and see the fame which had defied 
all proof made the capricious sport of hint and insinuation, while 
that father lived, she still had some protection, even in his night 
of life there was a sanctity about him which awed the daring of 
the highway slanderer — his honest, open, genuine E?igUsh look, 
would have silenced a whole banditti of Itahans. Your father 
acted upon the principles he professed. He was not more rever- 
enced as a king than he was beloved and respected as a man ; 
and no doubt, he felt how poignant it must have been to be de- 



LETTER TO THE KING. 171 

nouncecl as a criminal without crime, and treated as a widow in 
her husband's Ufe-time. But death was busy with her best pro- 
tectors, and the venerable form is lifeless now, which would have 
shielded a daughter and a Brunswick. He would have warned 
the Milan panders to beware the honour of his ancient house ; 
he would have told them that a prying, pettifogging, purchased 
inquisition upon the unconscious privacy of a royal female, was 
not in the spirit of the English character ; he would have dis- 
dained the petty larceny of any diplomatic pickpocket; and he 
would have told the whole rabble of Italian informers and swind- 
ling ambassadors, that his daughter's existence should not become 
a perpetual proscription ; that she was doubly allied to him by 
birth and marriage; and that those who exacted all a wife's obe- 
dience, should have previously procured for her a husband's coun- 
tenance. God reward him ! There is not a father or a hus- 
band in the land, whose heart does not at this moment make a 
pilgrimage to his monument. 

Thus having escaped from two conspiracies equally affecting 
her honour and life, tinding all conciliation hopeless, bereft by 
death of every natural protector, and fearing perhaps iha.t prac- 
tice might make perjury consistejit, she reluctantly determined on 
leaving England. One pang alone embittered her departure — 
her darling, and in despite of all discountenance, her duteous 
child, clung round her heart with natural tenacity. Parents 
who love, and feel that very love compelling separation, can 
only feel for her. Yet how could she subject that devoted child 
to the humiliation of her mother's misery i How reduce her to 
the sad alternative of selecting between separated parents ! She 
chose the generous, the noble sacrifice — self-banished, the world 
was before her — one grateful sigh for England — one tear — the 
last, last tear upon her daughter's head — and she departed. 

Oh Sire, imagine her at that departure ! How changed ! how 
fallen, since a few short years before, she touched the shores of 
England ! The day-beam fell not on a happier creature — creation 
caught new colours from her presence, joy sounded its timbrel as she 
passed, and the flowers of birth, of beauty, and of chivalry, bowed 
down before her. But now, alone, an orphan and a widow ! her 
gallant brother in his shroud of glory; no arm to shield, no tongue 
to advocate, no friend to follow an o'erclouded fortune, branded, 
degraded, desolate, she flung herself once more upon the wave. 



172 LETTER TO THE KING. 

to her less fickle than a husband's promises ! I do not wonder 
that she has now to pass through a severer ordeal, because impu- 
nity gives persecution confidence. But I marvel indeed much, 
that then, after the agony of an ex parte trial, and the triumph 
of a complete though lingering exculpation, the natural spirit of 
English justice did not stand embodied between her and the shore, 
and bear her indignant to your capital. The people, the peer- 
age, the prelacy should have sprung into unanimous procession : 
all that was noble or powerful, or consecrated in the land, should 
have borne her to the palace gate, and demanded why their 
Queen presented to their eye this gross anomaly ! Why her 
anointed brow should bow down in the dust, when a British ver- 
dict had pronounced her innocence ! Why she was refused that 
conjugal restitution, which her humblest subject had a right to 
claim ! Why the annals of their time should be disgraced, and 
the morals of their nation endure the taint of this terrific prece- 
dent ; and why it was that after their countless sacrifices for your 
royal house, they should be cursed with this pageajitry o( royal hu- 
miliation ! Had they so acted the dire aflliction of this day might 
have been spared us. We should not have seen the filthy sewers 
of Italy disgorge a living leprosy upon our throne ; and slaves and 
spies, imported from a creedless brothel, land to attaint the sacred 
Majesty of England ! But who, alas ! will succour the unfortu- 
nate ? The cloud of your displeasure was upon her, and the 
gay, glittering, countless insect swarm of summer friends, abide 
but in the sun-beam! She passed away — with sympathy I 
doubt not, but in silence. 

Who could have thought, that in a foreign land, the restless 
fiend of persecution would have haunted her 1 Who could have 
thought, that in those distant climes, where her distracted brain 
had sought oblivion, the demoniac malice of her enemies would 
have followed ? who could have thought that any human form 
which had an heart, would have skulked after the mourner in 
her wanderings, to note and con every unconscious gesture ? who 
could have thought, that such a man there was, who had drank 
at the pure fountain of our British law ! who had seen eternal 
justice in her sanctuary ! who had invoked the shades of Holt 
and Hardwicke, and held high converse with those mighty spirits, 
whom mercy hailed in heaven as her representatives on earth. 

Yet such a man there was ; who on the classic shores of Como, 



I 



LETTER TO THE KING. 173 

even in the land of the illustrious Roman, where every stone en- 
tombed an hero, and every scene was redolent of genius, forgot 
his name, his country, and his calling, to hoard such coinable 
and rabble slander ! oh, sacred shades of our departed sages ! 
avert your eyes from this unhallowed spectacle ; the spotless er- 
mine is unsullied still ; the ark yet stands untainted in the tem- 
ple, and should unconsecrated hands assail it, there is a lightning 
still, which would not slumber ! No, no ; the judgment seat of 
British law is to be soared, not crawled to; it must be sought 
upon an eagle's pinion and gazed at by an eagle's eye ; there is 
a radiant purity around it, to blast the glance of grovelling spe- 
culation. His labour was vain. Sire, the people of England will 
not listen to Italian witnesses, nor ought they. Our Queen, has 
been, before this, twice assailed, and assailed on the same charges. 
Adultery, nay, pregnancy, was positively sworn to, one of the 
ornaments of our navy, captain Manby, and one of the most glo- 
rious heroes who ever gave a nation immortality, a spirit of Ma- 
rathon or old Thermopylae ; he who planted England's red cross 
on the walls of Acre, and showed Napoleon, it was invincible, 
were the branded traitors to their sovereign's bed ! Englishmen, 
and, greater scandal, E?iglish women, persons of rank, and birth, 
and education, were found to depose to this infernal charge ! the 
royal mandate issued for inquiry ; Lord Erskine, Lord Ellenbo- 
rough, a man who had dandled accusations from his infancy, sat on 
the commission; and what was the result? Theyfomid a verdict 
of perjtiry against her base accusers ! The very child for whose 
parentage she might have shed her sacred blood, was proved 
beyond all possible denial, to have been but the adoption of her 
charity. — " We are happy to declare to your majesty our per- 
fect conviction, that there is no foundation whatever for believ- 
ing, (I quote the very words of the commissioners,) that the child 
now with the princess, is the child of her royal highness, or that 
she was deUvered of any child in the year 1802 ; nor has any 
thing appeared to us which would warrant the belief that she 
was pregnant in that year, or at afiy other period within the compass 
of our inquiries." Yet people of rank, and station, moving in the 
highest society in England, admitted even to the sovereign's court, 
actually volunteered their sworn attestation of this falsehood! 
Twenty years have rolled over her since, and yet the same foul 
charge of adultery, sustained not as before by the plausible fa- 



174 LETTER TO THE KING. 

brications of Englishmen, but bolstered by the habitual inventions 
of Italians, is sought to be affixed to the evenvig of her life, in the 
face of a generous and a loyal people ! A kind of sacramental 
shipload — a packed and assorted cargo of human affidavits has 
been consigned, it seems, from Italy to Westminster : thirty-three 
thousand pounds of the people's money paid the pedlar who se- 
lected the articles ; and with this infected freight, which should 
have performed quarantine before it vomited its moral pestilence 
amongst us, the Queen of England is sought to be attainted ! It 
cannot be. Sire ; we have given much, very much indeed, to 
foreigners, but we will not concede to them the hard-earned 
principles of British justice. It is not to be endured, that two 
acquittals should be followed by a third experiment : that when 
the English testament has failed, an Italian missaVs kiss shall be 
resorted to ; that when people of character here have been dis- 
credited, others should be recruited who have no character any 
where ; but, above all, it is intolerable, that a defenceless woman 
should pass her life in endless persecution, with one trial in swift 
succession following another, in the hope perhaps, that her 
noble heart which has defied all proof should perish in the tor- 
ture of eternal accusation. Send back, then, to Italy, those 
alien adventurers ; the land of their birth, and the habits of their 
lives, alike unfit for an English court of justice. There is no 
spark of freedom — no grace of religion — no sense of morals in 
their degenerate soil. Effemimate in manners; sensual from 
their cradles; crafty, venal, and officious; naturalized to crime ; 
outcasts of credulity ; they have seen from their infancy their 
court a bagnio, their very churches scenes of daily assassination ! 
their faith is form ; their marriage ceremony a mere mask for the 
most incestuous intercourses ; gold is the god before which they 
prostrate every impulse of their nature. " A euri sacra fames ! 
quid non mortalia pectora cogis !" the once indignant exclama 
tion of their antiquity has become the maxim of their modern 
practice. 

No nice extreme a true Italian knows ; 
But bid him go to hell — to hell he goes. 

Away with them any where from us : they cannot live in Eng- 
land : they will die in the purity of its moral atmosphere. 

Meanwhile during this accursed scrutiny, even while the legal 



LETTER TO THE KING. 175 

blood-hounds were on the scent, the last dear stay which bound 
her to the world, parted, the princess Charlotte died! I will not 
harrow up a father's feelings, by dwelling on this dreadful recol- 
lection. The poet says, that even grief finds comfort in society, 
and England wept with you. But, oh, God! what must have 
been that hapless mother's misery, when first the dismal tidings 
came upon her ? The darling child over whose cradle she had shed 
so many tears — whose hghtest look was treasured in her memo- 
ry — who, amid the world's frown, still smiled upon her — the fair 
and lovely flower, which, when her orb was quenched in tears, 
lost not its filial, its divine fidelity ! It was blighted in its blos- 
som — its verdant stem was withered, and in a foreign land she 
heard it, and alone — no, no, not quite alone. The myrmidons of 
British hate were around her, and when her heart's salt tears 
were hlinding her, a German nobleman was plundering her letters. 
Bethink you, Sire, if that fair paragon of daughters lived, would 
England's heart be wrung with this inquiry 1 Oh ! she would 
have torn the diamonds from her brow, and dashed each royal 
mockery to the earth, and rushed before the people, not in a 
monarch's, but in nature's majesty — a child appealing for her per- 
secuted mother ! and God would bless the sight, and man would 
hallow it, and every little infant in the land who felt a mother's 
warm tear upon her cheek, would turn by instinct to that sacred 
summons. Your daughter in her shroud, is tjet alive, Sire — her 
spirit is amongst us — it rose untombed when her poor mother 
landed — it walks amid the people — it has left the angels to pro- 
tect a parent. 

The theme is sacred, and I will not sully it — I will not reca- 
pitulate the griefs, and, worse than griefs, the little pitiful, deli- 
berate insults which are burning on every tongue in England. 
Every hope blighted — every friend discountenanced — her kin- 
dred in their grave — her declared innocence made but the herald 
to a more cruel accusation — her two trials followed by a third, 
a third on the same charges — her royal character insinuated 
away by German picklocks and Italian conspirators — her divorce 
sought by an extraordinary procedure, upon grounds untenable 
before any usual lay or ecclesiastical tribunal — her name meanly 
erased from the Liturgy — her natural rights as a mother disre- 
garded, and her civil right as a queen sought to be exterminated ! 



176 LETTER TO THE KING. 

and all this — all, because she dared to touch the sacred soil of 
liberty ! because she did not banish herself, an implied adulteress ! 
because she would not be bribed into an abandonment of herself 
and of the country over which she has been called to reign, and 
to which her heart is bound by the most tender ties, and the most 
indelible obligations. Yes, she might have lived wherever she 
selected, in all the magnificence which boundless bribery could 
procure for her, offered her by those who affect such tenderness 
for your royal character, and such devotion to the honour of her 
royal bed. If they thought her guilty, as they allege, this daring 
offer was a double treason — treason to your majesty, whose honour 
they compromised — treason to the people, whose money they thus 
prostituted. But she spurned the infamous temptation, and she 
was right. She was right to front her insatiable accusers ; even 
were she guilty, never was there victim with such crying pallia- 
tions, but all innocent, as in my conscience I believe her to be, 
not perhaps of the levities contingent on her birth, and which shall 
not be converted into constructive crime, but of the cruel charge 
of adultery, now for a third time produced against her. She was 
right, bereft of the court, which was her natural residence, and 
all buoyant with innocence as she felt, bravely to fling herself 
upon the wave of the people — that people will protect her — 
Britain's red cross is her flag, and Brunswick's spirit is her pilot. 
May the Almighty send her royal vessel triumphant into harbour ! 
Sire, I am almost done ; I have touched but slightly on your 
Queen's misfortunes — I have contracted the volume of her in- 
juries to a single page, and if upon that page one word offend 
you, impute it to my zeal, not my intention. Accustomed all my 
life to speak the simple truth, I offer it with fearless honesty to 
my sovereign. You are in a difficult — it may be in a most perilous 
emergency. Banish from your court the sycophants who abuse 
you ; surround your palace with approving multitudes, not with 
armed mercenaries. Other crowns may be bestowed by despots 
and entrenched by cannon ; but 

The throne we honour is the people's choice. 

Its safest bulwark is the popular heart, and its brightest orna- 
ment domestic virtue. Forget not also, there is a throne which is 
above even the throne of England — where flatterers cannot come 



LETTER TO THE KING. 177 

— where kings are sceptreless. The vows you made are written 
in language brighter than the sun, and in the course of nature 
you must soon confront them ; prepare the way by effacing now, 
each seeming, slight and fancied injury ; and when you answer 
the last awful trumpet, be your answer, this : "god, i forgave, i 

HOPE TO BE FORGIVEN." 

But if against all policy, and all humanity, and all religion, 
you should hearken to the counsels which further countenance 
this unmanly persecution, then must I appeal not to you, but to 
your parliament. — I appeal to the sacred prelacy of England, 
whether the holy vows which their high church administered, 
have been kept towards this illustrious lady — whether the hand 
of man should have erased her from that page, with which it is 
worse than blasphemy in man to interfere — whether, as Heaven's 
vicegerents, they will not abjure the sordid passions of the earth, 
imitate the inspired humanity of their Saviour ; and like Him, 
protect a persecuted creature from the insatiate fangs of ruth- 
less, bloody, and untiring accusation ! 

I appeal to the hereditary peerage of the realm, whether they 
will aid this levelling denunciation of their Queen — whether 
they will exhibit the unseemly spectacle of illustrious rank and 
royal lineage degraded for the crime of claiming its inheritance 
— whether they will hold a sort of civil crimination, where the 
accused is entitled to the mercy of an impeachment : or whether 
they will say with their immortal ancestors — " We will not tam- 
per with the laws of England !" 

I appeal to the ermined, independent judges, whether life is to 
be made a perpetual indictment — whether two acquittals should 
not discountenance a third experiment — whether, if any subject 
suitor came to their tribunal thus circumstanced, claiming either 
divorce or compensation, they would grant his suit; and 1 invoke 
from them, by the eternal majesty of British justice, the same 
measure for the peasant and the prince ! 

I appeal to the Commons in Parliament assembled, representing 
the fathers and the husbands of the nation — I beseech them by the 
outraged morals of the land! By the overshadowed dignity of 
the throne ! by the holiest and tenderest forms of religion ! by 
the honour of the army, the sanctity of the church, the safety of 
the state, and character of the country ! by the solemn virtues 
Z 



178 LETTER TO THE KING. 

which consecrate their hearths ! hy those fond endearments 
of nature and of habit which attach them to their cherished 
wives and families, 1 implore their tears, their protection, and 
their pity upon the married widow and the childless mother ! 

To those high powers and authorities I appeal with the firmest 
confidence in their honour, their integrity, and their wisdom. 
May their conduct justify my faith, and raise no blush on the 
cheek of our posterity! — I have the honour to subscribe myself 
Sire, your Majesty's most faithful subject, 

CHARLES PHILLIPS. 



SPEECHES 



Right Hon. JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN, 



MASTER OF THE ROLLS 



IN IRELAND. 



PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



It was formerly imagined that the study of the English law, from 
its nature, rendered its professors incapable of eloquence. 

Hume seems to have been a convert to the opinion ; and though in 
one of his essays he almost prophesies, that at a future day eloquent 
orators would arise in the British Senate ; yet with respect to the 
bar he does not even insinuate a similar prediction. At that time 
the notion appeared sanctioned by experience, and eloquent barristers 
not having previously existed, the thing was deemed impossible. 
The period of an Erskine and a Curran* will be hereafter considered 
a new era in the eloquence of the bar of these kingdoms. Before 
their time the publication of the state trials exhibit nothing of the 
orator in the pleadings of the lawyers ; even the cause of the seven 
bishops, on the event of which depended the liberties of England, 
could not excite energy in their advocates. Their speeches are ex- 
cellent in legal reasoning : they have no pretension to eloquence. 
The alteration of the law, at the revolution, by permitting an address 
to a jury in cases of high treason, enlarged the field of the barrister. 
Notwithstanding which, in the numerous prosecutions of the adhe- 
rents of the pretender, the counsel for the accused were insensible to 
the valuable privilege, and their languid defences would warrant the 
conclusion, that the magnitude of the crime with which the client 
was charged, extinguished the talents of his advocate, and deprived 
him of the benefit afforded by the legislature. The genius of Erskine, 
after nearly the lapse of a century, called forth that inestimable 
statute into the full vigour of operation. On the trial of lord George 
Gordon, he seized the opportunity, and, with honour to himself and 
advantage to his country, laid the foundation of that high professional 
rank and character, which he has always so ably and independently 
maintained. 

It is much to be regretted that Mr. Erskine's speeches as an advo- 
cate have not yet been published in a separate volume. They are 
only to be found in the printed reports of the trials in which he was 
engaged. And from the difficulty which the editor of the present 
volume experienced in collecting those of Mr. Curran, it is probable 
in a few years to procure Mr. Erskine's may be impossible. f From 

* Dunning and Burgh preceded them, and were for a short time their contempora- 
ries ; they were as inferior to these as Cotta and Hortensius to Cicero. 

t Since the second edition of this work came out, Mr. Erskine's speeches have been 
pubhshed. And either from more accurate notes of them having been taken at the 
time of their deUvery, or from the revision of the advocate, that work is infinitely bet- 
ter edited than this. The present third edition is nothing more than the re-printing 
of the second edition. Imperfect as the former editions of this work have been, the 

3 



iv PREFACE. 

a similar neglect, few memorials are now to be had of the professional 
eloquence of Dunning. And of the forensic exertions of Burgh, no- 
thing remains except an imperfect note of the speech he delivered at 
the bar of the Irish house of lords in the Valentia cause. To prevent 
the same fate attending those efforts of the talents of Mr. Curran, the 
memorials of which time has not yet destroyed, the editor gives this 
volume to the public. It appears under the disadvantage of being 
neither revised nor corrected by himself. His professional avocations 
would have prevented him yielding to such an application had it been 
made ; and had he even enjoyed leisure for the task, it is more than 
probable, the modesty of genius, Avhich always undervalues its own 
productions, would have dictated a refusal. The editor determined 
not to request, what he apprehended would not have been granted. 
This collection is therefore offered to the public, extracted from the 
printed ephemeral reports of the trials in which the speeches were 
delivered. Mr. Curran is neither responsible for this publication, nor 
for its demerits. And the editor has studiously avoided the alteration 
of the most apparent inaccuracies, from the indelicacy that would at- 
tend encroaching on the privilege which should be left to every pub- 
lic man, of correcting his own production, if at any time he should 
be disposed to exert it. His defences of Finny and Bond were con- 
sidered by the bar as his ablest performances at the state trials of the 
year 1798. But, unfortunately, the imperfect reports, which from 
accident or design were given to the public, are rather memorandums 
of facts, than specimens of the talents of the advocate. If better could 
have been procured, the public should have had them. 

The anonymous editor of the volume of Edmund Burke's parlia- 
mentary speeches, which appeared long before the edition of his 
works, sanctioned by himself, did not labour under the same disad- 
vantage. Each of them had been previously sent into the world, 
touched and retouched by the orator himself into the highest state of 
polish and improvement. Perhaps the anxiety of finish is too appa- 
rent, and notwithstanding many fine strokes of the sublime, they are 
rather elegant political essays, than eloquent harangues. The orations 
of Cicero are come down to us in a state much superior to what they 
were when delivered ; and it is clearly ascertained that the one against 
Verres, that for Milo, and the second Phillippic, are not those which 
were spoken at the time, but the compositions of subsequent retire- 
ment and study. And if our Irish advocate, in the period of his old 
age, in that interval between finishing the business of one world and 
entering upon the other, that period to which we all look forward as 
the season of the noblest enjoyment, should have leisure and inclina- 
tion to follow the example of the Roman orator, this volume, by 

imperfections of which, from the continuation of the causes assigned in the text, still 
exist. The editor has the satisfaction to know that he has by these imperfect labours 
contributed to extend the knowledge of Mr. Curran's talents not only to every part of 
Great Britain, but to the other side of the Atlantic. And it must be always a source 
of the highest gratification, that his humble endeavours to give a publicity as large aa 
its merits, to the genius of his countryman, excited the editor of Mr. Erskilie's forensic 
exertions to give them to the public in a-separate work, before the lapse of time had 
rendered it impossible. 



PREFACE. V 

bringing to his recollection what might otherwise have been irreco- 
verably lost, may afford him the opportunity of leaving to posterity a 
memorial worthy of himself. If the smallest fragments of the elo- 
quence of Crassus, Avho directed the education of Cicero; of Cotta, 
and Hortensius, who were his contemporaries and rivals, could now 
be procured, at what expense would they be purchased, with what 
avidity would they be read by every lover of polite literature. 

This volume, going down to future times, even with all its mani- 
fold errors and imperfections, must be highly valuable. It will create 
a permanent interest in a name, which might only be known by tra- 
dition ; and the eloquence of the Irish bar will be supported by better 
evidence than an " Audivi Hiberniam olim floruisse eloquentia,'''' as 
nothing similar will then exist to induce a belief of the fact. 

Ireland has still to experience the advantage of the union. If any 
such now exists, it is " a speck not yet visible, a small seminal prin- 
ciple, rather than a formed body ;'''' but the extinction of an assembly, 
in which the liberty, the honour, and happiness of the country were 
the subjects of debate, must be the eternal mildew of the genius of 
the land. Such topics call forth every noble propensity of our na- 
ture, every generous affection of the heart, and stimulate every power 
of the mind. The splendid examples of parliamentary eloquence 
kindled the emulation of the bar. Flood preceded Burgh, Curran 
followed Grattan. England possessed a Pulteney, a Chatham, and 
a Fox, before she had a Dunning and an Erskine. They who fled 
for refuge against party squabbles, and civil dissensions, to the aboli- 
tion of the parliament, were sadly mistaken. A spiritless tranquillity 
may be obtained; but the mind of man, .to improve, must be agitated: 
and it is better occasionally to hear the dashing of the waves, than 
continually to exhale the pestilential effluvia of stagnant waters. 
The voices of the parliament were perishable, because man is not im- 
mortal. Had the institution remained, its virtues would have been 
permanent. For half a century before the union, we had been running 
a generous race of honourable friendly rivalship with England, in 
every thing great and good. We had acquired commerce and con- 
stitution. In the production of public character we were not inferior. 
If Britain boasted of Pulteney, Chatham, Townsend, Fox, Grey, 
Dunning, and Erskine, Ireland could enumerate Boyle, Malone, 
Perry, Flood, Grattan, Daly, Ponsonby, Burgh, and Curran. These 
men will have no successors — when but boys, their minds were ex- 
panded, and their honourable ambition was inflamed, with the grow- 
ing grandeur of their country ; and they came into the world fitted 
and prepared to discharge the duties imposed upon them by their 
station. Many of them are long since removed from the stage of life. 
Little did they imagine, that, from the tree which they had planted, 
withering almost ere it blossomed, no descendant of theirs should 
gather the fruit. — Little did they imagine, that Ireland was to rise 
only to fall ; and but a moment of interval between her glory and 
her abasement. The physical and moral productions of man are go- 
verned by the same laws ; the work of accomplishment is slow — the 
work of destruction is rapid. The skill of the architect and the labour 



vi PREFACE. 

of an age erect the majestic edifice ; a succession of talents, of wis- 
dom, of integrity, form a constitution: the pick-axe of an ignorant 
workman levels the one with the dust, and the vote of a venal senate 
eternally annihilates the other. The Roman senate existed till the 
complete subversion of the western empire ; but the parliament of 
Ireland yielded to the English minister, what Rome, in the days of 
her greatest degeneracy, never surrendered to the vices or the virtues 
of her emperors. 

The only apology for this digression, if in truth it can be called 
such, is, that the writer is one, who, when not more than a child, has 
shed the tear of the heart, listening to the eloquence of a Flood and 
a Grattan, successfully contending for the rights of their native land. 
He was then of an age to understand such things, and cannot now 
forget that such things were : — whose feelings time has not yet sub- 
dued — but who, wishing to prevent his children being miserable, 
will think it a parental duty to educate them in sentiments more con- 
genial to the humbler fortunes of their country. It is only by degrees 
the mind of man is reconciled to his situation ; and it is to be hoped 
that these observations will be patieiitly endured, when even the 
flatterers of Augustus could, without fear of ofience, style the death of 
Cato nohile lethum, and call Brutus and Cassius ultimi Romanorum. 

These are neither the sentiments of a bad Irishman nor a bad sub- 
ject. The man who deplores the extinction of the Irish Parliament, 
to be consistent with himself, must ardently wish success to England, 
in her present contest with France. The British empire, in the ex- 
isting state of things, is the great bulwark of the liberties of Europe. 
And Ireland has still something well worth defending. 

To enter upon a criticism of Mr. Curran's eloquence would exceed 
the limits of a preface. To assert that it is without defect would be 
absurd. The greatest orators of antiquity perceived and acknowledged 
their own deficiencies. The perusal of many of the following 
speeches, however inadequately reported, will enable the reader to 
form a better judgment than any elaborate critique. The editor, who 
has often observed him in the different branches of professional exer- 
tion, cannot omit, that in the cross-examination of a witness he is 
unequalled. The most intricate web that fraud, malice, or corruption 
ever wove against the life, fortune, or character of an individual, he 
can unravel. Let truth and falsehood be ever so ingeniously dove- 
tailed into each other, he separates them with facility. He surveys 
his ground like a skilful general, marks every avenue of approach ; 
knows when to attack, when to yield ; instantly seizes the first in- 
consistency of testimony, pursues his advantage with dexterity and 
caution, till at last he completely involves perjury in the confusion 
of its contradictions. And while the bribed and suborned witness is 
writhing in the mental agony of detected falsehood, wrings from him 
the truth, and snatches the devoted victim from the altar. It is when 
in a case of this kind he speaks to a jury, that he appears as if de- 
signed by providence to be the refuge of the unfortunate, and the 
protector of the oppressed. In the course of his eloquence, the clas- 
sic treasures of profane antiquity are exhausted. He draws fresh 



PREFACE. vii 

supplies from the sacred fountain of living waters. The records of 
holy writ afford him the sublimest allusions. It is then he stirs every 
principle that agitates the heart or sways the conscience, carries his 
auditory whither he pleases, ascends from man to the Deity, and 
again almost seems to call down to earth fire from heaven. While 
they who listen, filled with a sense of inward greatness, feel the high 
nobility of their nature in beholding a being of the same species gifted 
with such transcendant qualities, and, wrapt in wonder and delight, 
have a momentary belief, — that to admire the talents, is to participate 
in the genius of the orator. 

Mr. Curran has, from his first mixing with the world, enjoyed the 
intimate acquaintance of many who hold the first rank, in England 
and Ireland, for private integrity, public spirit, fine genius and litera- 
ry acquirement, and is connected with some of them (not the least 
distinguished) in the bonds of the strictest friendship. In private life, 
his manners are cheerful, sportive and good-natured, never over- 
valuing himself. 

The most limited talents in private intercourse were never forced 
by him into a feeling of inferiority, nor has he ever, in the most unre- 
strained hours of social mirth, panged the heart of any who were pre- 
sent : so well is his wit tempered by the urbanity of his disposition. 
It is much superior to that species which must always have an object 
to ridicule, and, to amuse a company, render one of the party misera- 
ble. Nor is it of that second rate mongrel kind, which always 
dwells in anecdote, to create an opportunity of quoting itself, but is 
of the purest genuine nature, flowing spontaneously from the subject 
of conversation. 

The descendants of Mr. Curran, to the remotest period, may pride 
themselves on being sprung from a man, who, during seventeen years 
of public life, never voted in parliament contrary to the interest or 
liberty of his country ; who, governing his political conduct by the 
maxims of an English whig and an Irish patriot, showed himself a 
genuine friend to the British empire — from him who never on any 
occasion was frowned by power or seduced by mean ambition into an 
abandonment of his client, but in every situation intrepidly performed 
the duty of an advocate.* Who, if he had been a man " quoquefaci- 
nore properans darescere," instead of disdaining to acquire honours 
by means which would have rendered him unworthy of wearing them, 
might early in life have attained the proudest professional situations. 

The bar of Ireland will long hold in afiectionate recollection, the 
man who always lived in an ingenuous and honourable intercourse 
with his competitors for fame, as Cicero did with Hortensius ; who 
cherished, with the kindest notice, every appearance of excellence in 
the junior part of the profession ; who never ostentatiously displayed 
his superiority ; who, conscious of his great talents, bestowed praise 
wherever it was deserved ; and was incapable of meanly detracting 



♦Mr. Erskine is entitled to similar praise, though he has never been placed in 
situations equally trying. The state of England in 1794, and that of Ireland in 1798, 
virere very different. 

2A 



7iii PREFACE. 

from the merit of another to enhance liis own. They will never for- 
get him, who, on every occasion, proudly asserted the dignity and 
independence of the advocate, and never servilely surrendered even the 
least privilege of the profession. While his name will live for ever 
hallowed in the grateful remembrance of his country, unless the heart 
of man shall become so corrupt, and his mind so perverted, that pub- 
lic virtue will neither be felt nor understood. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 

The demand of the public for Mr. Curran's speeches, notwith- 
standing three thousand copies, (including the whole of the first edi- 
tion,) have been sold, induced the editor to publisha second edition. A 
few of Mr. Curran's parliamentary speeches are added to the collec- 
tion contained in the first edition, which only consisted of those he 
delivered in the discharge of his professional duty. They are extract- 
ed from the Irish parliamentary debates ; and indifferent as the notes 
of the speeches delivered in the courts of law may appear, these are 
still worse. The disappointment expressed almost by every pur- 
chaser, at not finding any of the parliamentary speeches in the first, 
induced the editor to add them in the present edition. They are 
given for the gratification of the public, although the editor is con- 
vinced, that they are in most instances inferior to the genius of Mr. 
Curran. In all of them, however, enough appears to enable the 
reader to form an idea, though probably an imperfect one, of Mr. 
Curran's eloquence in a popular assembly. It is to be regretted that 
the note of the speech on the catholic question, in the year 1793, is 
so defective, that it was impossible to venture to publish it, though it 
was one of the best he ever delivered in the house of commons. It 
contained a description of the rise, progress, and extinction of liberty 
in the nations of the world formerly most celebrated; and given with 
all the glowing energy of a Burke, without any of his eccentricity. 
The editor, from despair of obtaining it, did not solicit the correction 
of the orator for the former edition : — The duties of the high station 
in which Mr. Curran is now placed,* rendering the hope of success 
in such an application now less probable, it was not made on the pre- 
sent occasion. The editor, notwithstanding the imperfections of the 
work, is confident of its favourable reception with the public. — And 
he feels an honourable pride, that by this publication he may be the 

♦ Mr. Curran, during the administration of Mr. Fox and lord Grenville, was made 
master of the rolls in Ireland, and has at last experienced that an independent spirit, 
public integrity accompanied by great talents are not insuperable obstacles to professional 
advancement. 

Ireland has much cause to lament the dismissal of that administration : enlightened, 
liberal, and sagacims, the men who composed it understood the true interest of the 
British empire, and had entered upon the work of making Ireland a happy and united 
country, truly formidable to the enemy of Britain. They by whose means they have 
been supplanted have the merit of interruiiting the labours of such men. 



ADVERTISEMENT. ix 

humble instrument of perpetuating to postei'ity the productions of a 
man, who will always be esteemed as one of the greatest ornaments 
of the age and the country in which he lived. 



ADVERTISEMENT TO THE THIRD EDITION. 



The following passages are selected from the Edinburgh Review, 
of the month of October, 1808, in Avhich is reviewed the second edi- 
tion of this work, which the writer of the article calls most properly 
an unauthenticated volume. The editor is sensible that the same 
epithet is equally applicable to the present edition. It is, in fact, no- 
thing more than a re-printing of the second edition ; and the editor 
has equally abstained from the correction of errors, which are evi- 
dently the mistakes of the reporters, from a wish of leaving, unin- 
fringed, to Mr. Curran the full power of revising his own productions, 
if, at any time, he should be disposed to exert it. And it is to be 
ardently wished that the advocate may yet, before his mortal course 
is finished, enable some future editor to give the world a memorial 
more worthy of his talents. 

" The wits of Queen Anne's time practised a sort of polite writing, 
characterized by purity, smoothness, and a kind of simple and tem- 
perate elegance. Their reasoning was correct and luminous, and 
their raillery terse and refined ; but they never so much as aimed at 
touching the greater passions, or rising to the loftier graces of com- 
position. Their sublimity was little more than a gentle and graceful 
solemnity ; their invective went no further than polished sarcasm, 
and their vehemence than pretty vivacity. Even the older writers, 
who dealt in larger views and stronger language, the Hookers and 
Taylors, and Barrows, and Miltons, although they possessed, beyond 
all doubt, an original and commanding eloquence, had little of nature 
or rapid movement of passion about them. Their diction, though 
powerful, is loaded and laborious ; and their imagination, though rich 
and copious, is neither playful nor popular. Even the celebrated 
orators of England have been deficient in some of these characteris- 
tics. The rhetoric of Fox was his logic ; — the eloquence of Pitt con- 
sisted mainly in his talent for sarcasm, and for sounding amplification. 
Neither of them had much pathos — and but little play of fancy. 

" Yet the style of which we are speaking is now familiar to the 
English public. But it was introduced by an Irishman ; and may be 
clearly traced to the genius of Burke. There was no such composi- 
tion known in England before his day. Bolingbroke, whom he is 
sometimes said to have copied, had none of it. He is infinitely more 
careless, — he is infinitely less impassioned. He has no such variety 
of imagery,' — no such flights of poetry, — no such touches cf tender- 
ness, — no such visions of philosophy. The style has been defiled 
b 



X ADVERTISEMENT. 

since, indeed, by base imitations and disgusting parodies ; and, in its 
more imitable parts, has been naturalized and transfused into the 
recent literature of our country; but it was of Irish origin, and still 
attains to its highest honours only in its native soil. For this we ap- 
peal to the whole speaking and writing of that nation, — to the speeches 
of Mr. Grattan, and even to the volume before us. With less of deep 
thought than the corrected compositions of Burke, and less of point 
and polish than the magical eflusions of Grattan, it still bears the im- 
pression of that inflamed fancy which characterizes the eloquence of 
both, and is distinctly assimilated to them by those traits of national 
resemblance." 

The Review, then, among other passages of the work, selects the 
following from the report of the trial ; in the action brought by Hevey, 
against Major Sirr. — It is deemed unnecessary to give any more ex- 
tracts from the Review, as those sufficiently speak the opinion of the 
critic. 

" Mr. Curran then proceeds to the immediate cause of the action in 
question. 

" ' On the 8th of September last, Mr. Hevey was sitting in a public 
coffee-house. Major Sirr was there. Mr. Hevey was informed that 
the major had at that moment said, that he (Hevey) ought to have 
been hanged. The plaintiff was fired at the charge ; he fixed his eye 
on Sirr, and asked if he had dared to say so ? Sirr declared that he 
had, and had said truly. Hevey answered, that he was a slanderous 
scoundrel. At the instant Sirr rushed upon him, and assisted by 
three or four of his satellites, who had attended him in disguise, se- 
cured him, and sent him to the castle guard, desiring that a receipt 
might be given for the villain. He was sent thither. The officer of 
the guard chanced to be an Englishman, but lately arrived in Ireland ; 
he said to the bailiffs, if this was in England, I should think this gen- 
tleman entitled to bail, but I don't know the laws of this country. 
However I think you had better loosen those irons on his wrists, or 
I think they may kill him. 

" ' Here he was flung into a room of about thirteen feet by twelve ; 
it was called the hospital of the provost ; it was occupied by six beds, 
in which were to lie fourteen or fifteen miserable wretches, some of 
them sinking under contagious diseases. Here he passed the first 
night without bed or food. The next morning his humane keeper, 
the Major, appeared. The plaintift' demanded, " why he was so im- 
prisoned ?" complained of hunger, and asked for the gaol allowance. 
Major Sandys replied with a torrent of abuse, which he concluded 
by saying — " Your crime is your insolence to Major Sirr; however, 
he disdains to trample upon you ; you may appease him by proper 
and contrite submission ; but unless you do so, you shall rot where 
you are. — I tell you this, that if government will not protect us, by 
God, we will not protect them. You will probably (for I know your 
insolent and ungrateful hardiness) attempt to get out by an habeas 
corpus ; but in that you will find yourself mistaken, as such a rascal 
deserves." Hevey was insolent enough to issue an habeas corpus, 
and a return was made upon it, that Hevey was in custody under a 



ADVERTISEMENT. xi 

warrant from General Craig, on a charge of treason. This return 
was a gross falsehood fabricated by Sirr.^ 

" If it be the test of supreme genius topi-oduce strong and permanent 
emotions, the passages which we have quoted must be in the very- 
highest style of eloquence. There is not a subject of these king- 
doms, we hope, that can read them, without feeling his blood boil, 
and his heart throb with indignation ; and without feeling, that any 
government which could tolerate or connive at such proceedings, held 
out a bounty to rebellion, which it would almost be dastardly to re- 
ject. The eloquence of these passages is in the facts which they 
recite ; and it is far more powerful than that which depends upon the 
mere fancy or art of the orator. There are passages, however, of 
this more ornate description in the speech before us, which deserve 
to be quoted. The following is among the most striking. Mr. Cur- 
ran is endeavouring to show, that the general publication of this trans- 
action may be of use, as the means of letting England know the real 
condition and state of government in Ireland ; and that the detail of a 
single authenticated fact is more likely to make an impression, than a 
more comprehensive but general picture. He then says, 

" ' If, for instance, you wished to convey to the mind of an English 
matron the horrors of that direful period, when, in defiance of the 
remonstrance of the ever to be lamented Abercrombie, our poor people 
Avere surrendered to the licentious brutality of the soldiery, by the 
authority of the state ; you would vainly endeavour to give her a ge- 
neral picture of lust, and rapine, and murder, and conflagration. In- 
stead of exhibiting the picture of an entire province, select a single 
object; and even in that single object do not release the imagination 
of your hearer from its task, by giving more than an outline : take a 
cottage ; place the affrighted mother of her orphan daughters at the 
door, the paleness of death upon her face, and more than its agonies 
in her heart ; her aching eye, her anxious ear, struggle through the 
mists of closing day, to catch the approaches of desolation and dis- 
honour. The ruffian gang arrives ; the feast of plunder begins ; the cup 
of madness kindles in its circulation. The wandering glances of the 
ravisher become concentrated upon the shrinking and devoted victim. 
— You need not dilate, you need not expatiate ; the unpolluted mo- 
ther, to whom you tell the story of horror, beseeches you not to pro- 
ceed ; she presses her child to her heart ; she drowns it in her tears ; 
her fancy catches more than an angel's tongue could describe ; at a sin- 
gle view she takes in the Avhole miserable succession of force, of pro- 
fanation, of despair, of death. So it is in the question before us. If 
any man shall hear of this day's transaction, he cannot be so foolish 
as to suppose that we have been confined to a single character, like 
those now brought before you.' " 



y 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
On the right of election of lord mayor of the city of Dublin, between alderman 
Howison and James, before the lord lieutenant and privy council of Ireland, 13 

On moving that it is the exclusive privilege of the house of commons to origi- 
nate money bills, - ... ......47 

On Attachments, .---- 51 

On the Commercial Resolutions, --... . -57 

On the bill for Regulating the Commercial Intercourse between Great Britain 
and Ireland, ...._.... .-64 

On Mr. Forbes presenting a bill to limit the amount of Pensions, - - 69 

On Pensions, .-.-..73 

On CathoUc Emancipation, -....- -.-78 

In behalf of Archibald Hamilton Rowan. Esq. for a libel - - - 90 

In behalf of Mr. Patrick Finney for high treason, - . . - . 139 

In behalf of Mr. Peter Finnerty for a libel, 155 

Inbehalf of Oliver Bond, Esq. for high treason, - - - - - 185 

In behalf of Lady Pamela Fitzgerald and children, against the bill of attainder of 
Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 201 

In the action for false imprisonment brought by Mr. John Hevey against Ma- 
jor Sirr, - 212 

In the trial of Owen Kirwan for high treason, 226 

In the action brought by the Rev. Charles Massy against the Marquis of Head- 
fort, for crim. con. with the plaintiff's wife, ..... 240 

In the cause of the king against the Hon. Mr. Justice Johnson, - - 256 
In the case of Merry, versus Rt. Rev. Doctor John Power, R. C. Bishop of Wa- 
terford, 295 

12 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN 

ON THE RIGHT OP ELECTION OF LORD MAYOR OF THE 
CITY OF DUBLIN. 

DELIVEBED BEFORE THE LORD LIEUTENANT AND PRIVY COUNCIL 
OF IRELAND 1790 



My Lords, — I have the honour to appear before you as counsel 
for the commons of the corporation of the metropoHs of Ireland, 
and also for Mr. Alderman Howison, who hath petitioned for your 
approbation of him as a fit person to serve as lord mayor, in virtue 
of his election by the commons to that high office; and in that 
capacity I rise to address you on the most important subject that 
you have ever been called upon to discuss. — Highly interesting 
and momentous indeed, my lords, must every question be, that, 
even remotely and eventually, may affect the well-being of socie- 
ties, or the freedom, or the repose of nations: but that question, 
the result of which, by an immediate and direct necessity, must 
decide, either fatally or fortunately, the life or the death of that 
well-being, of that freedom, and that repose, is surely the most 
important subject on which human wisdom can be employed, if 
any subject on this side the grave can be entitled to that appel- 
lation. 

You cannot therefore, my lords, be surprised to see this place 
crowded by such numbers of our fellow citizens : heretofore they 
were attracted hither by a strong sense of the value of their 
rights, and of the injustice of the attack upon them ; they felt 
all the magnitude of the contest ; but they were not disturbed 
by any fear for the event ; they relied securely on the justice of 
their cause, and the integrity of those who were to decide upon 
it. But the public mind is now filled with a fear of danger, the 
more painful and alarming, because hitherto unforeseen : the 

13 



14 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

public are now taught to fear, that their cause may be of doubtful 
merits, and disastrous issue ; that ri£'hts, which they considered 
as defined by the wisdom, and confirmed by the authority of 
written law, may, now, turn out to be no more than ideal claims, 
without either precision or security ; that acts of parliament 
themselves are no more than embryos of legislation, or at best 
but infants, whose first labours must be, not to teach, but to 
learn ; and which, even after thirty years of pupilage, may have 
thirty more to pass under that guardianship, which the wisdom 
of our policy has provided for the protection of minors. — Sorry 
am I, my lords, that I can offer no consolation to my clients 
on this head ; and that I can only join them in bewailing, that 
the question, whose result must decide upon their freedom 
or servitude, is perplexed with difficulties, of which we never 
dreamed before, and which we are now unable to comprehend. 
Yet surely, my lords, that question must be difficult, upon which 
the wisdom of the representative of our dread sovereign, aided 
by the learning of his chancellor and his judges, assisted also 
by the talents of the most conspicuous of the nobles and the 
gentry of the nation, has been twice already employed, and em- 
ployed in vain. — We know, my lords, that guilt and oppression 
may stand irresolute for a moment ere they strike, appalled by 
the prospect of danger, or struck with the sentiment of remorse ; 
but to you, my lords, it were presumption to impute injustice: we 
must therefore suppose that you have denied your determination, 
not because it was dangerous, but because it was difficult to de- 
cide : and indeed, my lords, a firm belief of this difficulty, however 
undiscoverable by ordinary talents, is so necessary to the character 
which this august assembly ought to possess and to merit from the 
country, that I feel myself bound to achieve it by an effort of my 
faith if I should not be able to do so by any exertion of my 
understanding. 

In a question therefore so confessedly obscure as to baffle so 
much sagacity, I am not at liberty to suppose, that certainty 
could be attained by a concise examination. Bending then, as I 
do, my lords, to your high authority, I feel this difficulty as a call 
upon me to examine it at large ; and I feel it as an assurance, that 
I shall be heard with patience. 

The lord mayor of this city hath from time immemorial been 
a magistrate, not appointed by the crown, but elected by his 



LOUD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 15 

fellow-citizens. From the history of the early periods of this 
corporation and a view of its charters and by-laws, it appears, 
that the commons had from the earliest periods participated in the 
important I'ight of election to that high trust ; and it was natural 
and just, that the whole body of citizens, by themselves, or their 
representatives, should have a share in electing those magistrates 
who were to govern them : as it was their birth-right to be ruled 
only by laws which they had a share in enacting. 

The aldermen, however, soon became jealous of this participa- 
tion, encroached by degrees upon the commons, and at length 
succeeded in engrossing to themselves the double privilege of eli- 
gibility and of election ; of being the only body, out of which, 
and by which, the lord mayor could be chosen. Nor is it strange, 
that in those times, a board, consisting of so small a number as 
twenty-four members, with the advantages of a more united in- 
terest, and a longer continuance in office, should have prevailed, 
even contrary to so evident principles of natural justice and con- 
stitutional right, against the unsteady resistance of competitors, 
so much less vigilant, so much more numerous, and therefore so 
much less united. — It is the common fate of the indolent to see 
their rights become a prey to the active. — The condition upon 
which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance ; which 
condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his 
crime and the punishment of his guilt. 

In this state of abasement the commons remained for a number 
of years ; sometimes supinely acquiescing under their degrada 
tion ; sometimes, what was worse, exasperating the fury, and 
alarming the caution of their oppressors, by ineffectual resist- 
ance : — The slave that struggles without breaking his chain, 
provokes the tyrant to double it ; and gives him the plea of self- 
defence for extinguishing what, at first, he only intended to subdue. 
In the year 1G72, it was directed by one of the new rules, 
made by the lord lieutenant and privy council, under the autho- 
rity of the act of explanation, that " No person should be capa- 
ble of serving in the office of lord mayor, until approved of by 
the lord lieutenant and council ;" and this was a power given 
after the unhappy civil commotions in this country, to prevent 
any person, who was not a loyal subject, from holding so import- 
ant a trust ; and upon this single ground, namely, disloyalty, have 
vou, my lords, any authority to withhold your approbation. 
2B 



16 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

From that time, till the year 1759, no farther alteration ap- 
pears to have taken place in the mode of electing the chief ma- 
gistrate. At this latter period the act of the 33 G. II. was passed : 
the occasion and the object of that law are universally known. 
A city so increased in population, in opulence, and in conse- 
quence, could not tamely submit to have its corporate rights mo- 
nopolised by a few, who where at once the tyrants of the metro- 
polis, and the slaves of the government. Magistrates, elected 
l)y the board of aldermen, were in fact nominated by the court, 
and were held in derision and abhorrence by the people. The 
public peace was torn by unseemly dissensions; and the au- 
thority of the law itself was lost in the contempt of the magis- 
trate. The legislature felt itself called upon to restore the con- 
stitution of the city, to restore and ascertain the rights of the 
commons, and thereby to redeem the metropolis from the fatal 
effects of oppression, of servitude, and of anarchy. — In saying 
this, my lords, I am founded on the preamble of the act itself. — 
" Whereas dissensions and disputes have, from a dissatisfaction as 
to some parts of the present constitution of the corporation of 
the city of Dublin, arisen, and for some years past subsisted among 
several citizens of the said city, to the weakening the authority 
of the magistrates thereof, who are hereby rendered the less able 
to preserve the public peace within the said city : Therefore, 
for remedying the aforesaid mischiefs and inconveniences, and 
for restoring harmony and mutual good will among the citi- 
zens of the said city, and for preserving peace and good order 
therein : At the humble petition of the lord mayor, sheriffs, 
commons and citizens of the city of Dublin, be it enacted," &.c. 

Here are stated the mischief acknowledged, and the remedy 
proposed : — with this view, the statute has ascertained the consti- 
tuent parts of the corporation, their respective members, their 
rights, and the mode of their election, with so minute and detailed 
an exactness, as even to enact many of those regulations which 
stood upon the authority of the new rules, or the ancient char- 
ters and by-laws, and in which no alteration whatsoever was in- 
tended to be made ; and this it did, that the city might not be 
left to explore her rights by uncertain deduction from obscure or 
distant sources, but that she might see the whole plan in a single 
view, comprised within the limits of a single statute, and that so 
intelligibly to every common undeistanding, as to preclude all 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 17 

possibility of doubt, and thereby all further danger of cavil or 
dissension. 

For this purpose it enacts, " That the common council of the 
city of Dublin, consisting of the lord mayor and twenty-four al- 
dermen, sitting apart by themselves as heretofore, and also of the 
sheriffs of the said city for the time being, and sheriffs' peers not 
exceeding forty-eight, and of ninety-six freemen, who are to be 
elected into the said common council out of the several guilds or 
corporations of the said city in manner hereafter mentioned, be 
and for ever hereafter shall be deemed and taken to be the com- 
mon council of the said city and the representative body of the 
corporation thereof." 

It then prescribes the mode of electing representatives of the 
several guilds and the time of their service, in which the right 
of the commons is exclusive and without control. 

It then regulates the election of sheriffs : The commons nomi- 
nate eight freemen, the mayor and aldermen elect two from that 
number. 

Then of aldermen ; The mayor and aldermen nominate four 
sheriffs' peers ; the commons elect one of them. 

And here, my lords, give me leave to observe, that this exclu- 
sive right of electing their own representatives, and this partici- 
pation in the election of their magistrates, is given to the popular 
part of the corporation to be exercised, as all right of suffrage is 
exercised by the constitution of this country ; that is, according 
to the dictates of judgment or of affection, and without any au- 
thority vested in any human tribunal, of catechising as to the 
motives that may operate on the mind of a free elector in the 
preference of one candidate or the rejection of another, 

I will now state to your lordships that part of the statute 
which relates to the subject of this day. 

"And be it enacted by the authority aforesaid. That the 
name of every person who shall hereafter be elected by the lord 
mayor and aldermen of the said city, or the usual quorum of them, 
to serve in the office or place of lord mayor of the said city, shall 
be returned by them to the commons of the common council of 
the said city for their approbation ; without which approbation 
such person shall not be capable of serving in the office or place 
of lord mayor ; and if it shall happen, that the said commons shall 
reject or disapprove of the person so returned to them, the lord 



18 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

mayor and aldermen of the said city, or the usual quorum of 
them, shall from time to time elect another person to serve in the 
office or place of lord mayor of the said city, and shall from time 
to time return the name of the person so by them elected to the 
commons of the common council of the said city for their appro- 
bation, and so from time to time until the said commons shall 
approve of the person returned by the lord mayor and aldermen 
of the said city, or the usual quorum of them ; provided always, 
that such election into the said office of lord mayor shall be of 
some person from among the aldermen, and that the commons 
shall approve of some one person so elected and returned to them 
for their approbation. 

" And for the preventing the mischiefs and inconveniences which 
may arise from a failure of the corporation of the said city in the 
appointment of necessary officers ; be it enacted by the authority 
aforesaid, That if either the lord mayor and aldermen, or the 
commons of the said city, shall omit or refuse to assemble at or 
within the usual times for the electing the lord mayor, aldermen, 
and sheriffs respectively : or being assembled shall omit or refuse 
to do what is hereby required to be done by them respectively, 
for the election and appointment of the said officers ; then, and 
as often as the case shall happen, it shall and may be lawful for 
the commons in case such default shall be in the lord mayor and 
aldermen, or for the aldermen in case such default shall be in 
the commons, or for the usual quorum of them respectively, with- 
out any summons for that purpose, to assemble themselves at the 
tholsel of the said city on next following day, (not being Sunday,) 
or in case the same shall happen to be on Sunday, then on the 
Monday next following, and then and there to elect the said of- 
ficers respectively as the case shall require; and every such 
election, so made, shall and is hereby declared to be valid and 
effectual to all intents and purposes. 

" Provided always, and be it further enacted by the authority 
aforesaid. That every election by the said several guilds, for the 
constituting of their representatives in the common council of 
the said city, and every election made or approbation given by 
the commons of the said common council by virtue of this act 
shall be by ballot, and not otherwise. 

"Provided aHvays, that notwithstanding any thing in this act 
contained, no person or persons shall be enabled or made ca- 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 19 

pable to serve in or execute the office or place of lord mayor or 
sheriff, recorder or town clerk of the said corporation, until he 
or they shall respectively be approved of by the lord heutenant 
or other chief governor or governors and privy council of this 
kingdom, in such manner as hath heretofore been usual." 

Under this act, at the Easter quarter assembly, held on the 
16th day of April, 1790, the lord mayor and aldermen sent down 
the name of Mr. alderman James to the commons, wdio rejected 
him ; the lord mayor and aldermen elected seven other persons, 
who were sent down to the commons and successively rejected : 
the lord mayor and aldermen then broke up their meeting with- 
out sending down the name of any other person, or conceiving 
that they had any right whatsoever to question the commons 
touching their reasons for rejecting those who had been so re- 
jected. 

The sheriffs and commons, thinking that the lord mayor and 
aldermen had omitted to do what was required of them by the 
statute to do, namely, to proceed by sending down the name of 
another person, and so from time to time, &,c. assembled and 
elected Mr. alderman Howison, whom they returned for the ap- 
probation of this board. — The lord mayor and aldermen returned 
Mr. James also as duly elected ; the claims of both parties were 
heard by their counsel, and this board did not think proper to 
approve of either candidate ; the city proceeded to a new election ; 
the name of Mr. James was again sent down, and rejected as 
before ; a message was then sent to demand of the commons the 
reason of their disapprobation ; they declined giving any answer, 
but that it was their legal right to do as they had done : Mr. 
James was accordingly returned as duly elected by the lord 
mayor and aldermen ; the sheriffs and commons, as before, elected 
and returned Mr. Howison ; the claims of the candidates were 
again debated before this honourable board, but nothing was de- 
cided. 

A third assembly has since been held, in which the lord mayor 
and aldermen have acted as before, and returned Mr. James ; 
the sheriffs and commons have elected Mr. Howison, who has 
petitioned for your approbation in virtue of that election. 

I trust, my lords, you will think it now time to decide the 
question ; my client calls for that decision : his opponents cannot 
wish for longer procrastination ; in the progress of their preten- 



20 SPEECH ON THE ELECTlOiN U* 

sions hitherto they have found the fears, and odium, and repro- 
bation of the pubUc increasing upon them. 

It is fuU time to compose the disquietude of that pubUc : — 
the people do not always perceive the merits or the magnitude 
of a question at a single glance, but they nov^r completely com- 
prehend its merits and importance, they are nov^r satisfied that 
every thing that can be of value to men may be lost or secured 
by the event of the present contest. 

The claim of my clients has been impeached upon an alleged 
meaning of this act, and also upon certain facts stated by the 
learned counsel on the other side, and admitted as proved ; of 
which facts, and the arguments upon them, I will take notice in 
their proper place. 

As to the invective so liberally bestowed upon my fellow-citi- 
zens, it best becomes the unhired, voluntary advocate of their 
rights to pass them without remark.* 1 feel them of too high 
respect to be protected by panegyric or avenged by invective ; 
I shall therefore treat those sallies of the learned gentleman's 
imaginations as I would the flights of their doves, they come 
abroad only animo revertendi, and ought to be suffered to return 
unmolested to their owners. 

The right of Mr. Howison is confessed by the council for his 
opponents to be warranted by the letter of the law. The mayor 
and aldermen sent down Mr. James; he was rejected by the 
commons, who sent to request that another might be sent down ; 
the board did not send down another, but demanded a reason for 
the rejection of Mr. James, which by the letter of the act they 
were certainly not warranted in doing. But it is said that by the 
sound construction of that law, the commons have a right to reject 
only for good cause, and that having refused to assign such cause, 
they have been guilty of a default which has transferred the sole 
right of election to the lord mayor and aldermen, who have 
accordingly elected Mr. James. 

Lord Chancellor. — The question here is, " can a mere right 
of rejection or approbation supersede a right of election." 

Mr. Curran — If I can satisfy this board that that is not the 



* Mr. Curran here alludes to certain abusive passages contained in the speech of 
Dr. Duigenan, who appeared before the council as advocate for alderman James and 
the board of aldermen. 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 21 

question, I ti'ust I shall be heard with patience as to what 1 con- 
ceive to be the question. 

I say, my lords, that is not the question ; because, 
1st, The mode and the rights of election in this case turn not 
upon any general doctrine of the common law, but upon an 
express statute, which statute would never have been made, had 
it not been intended by the legislature to prescribe rules of 
direction, different from those of the common law. 

2dly, The rule alluded to relates to officers in corporations, as 
in the case cited, who have a naked authority to admit, but can 
reject only for a plain defect of right in the candidate, and who, 
if a mandamus is directed to him requiring him to admit, must 
return a legal cause of his disapprobation, that the truth of the 
fact, or the validity of the cause may be duly tried. 

But there is clearly no analogy between such an officer and 
the great body of the commons of this city. 

1st, That officer has no elective authority whatsoever ; — 
it is admitted that the act gives to the commons at least a con- 
current elective control, and, if the mayor and aldermen " make 
default," an exclusive right to elect, which shall be " valid to all 
intents and purposes !" 

2dly, That officer has a sort of judicial power, which is well 
placed in a single permanent individual, who is capable of, and 
responsible for the exercise of a judicial power ; — but it would 
be monstrous to give a judicial power to a fluctuating multitude; 
for they cannot be presumed capable of exercising it, nor could 
they be responsible for such exercise by any course of law ; for, 
suppose a mandamus directed to them requiring them to approve, 
now is it possible to make any true return to such writ? How 
can any man assign a cause for that rejection which the law 
requires to be by ballot, and consequently secret ? Or, suppose 
a party of the commons are practised upon to return a cause, 
and that designedly an invalid one, how shall the residue of the 
commons be able to justify themselves by alleging the true and 
valid cause of their disapprobation 1 

To try it therefore by such a rule is to try it by a rule clearly 
having no general analogy to the subject, nor even a possible 
application, except so far only as it begs the question. 

My lords, it is absurd to ask how a simple power of approba- 
tion or rejection for cause, shall be controlled, unless it is first 



22 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

determined u hether the commons have that simple power only, 
or whether they have, what I think they clearly have under the 
statute, a peremptory right of approving or rejecting without 
any control whatsoever. 

If they have but a simple right to reject for cause, and ought 
to have assigned such cause under the law, they have been guilty 
of a default, and the sole right to elect devolves to the board 
of aldermen, who, of course, have duly elected. If they are 
not bound to assign such a reason, manifestly the aldermen have 
acted against law, and by their default have lost this power, 
and the commons have duly elected Mr. Howison. 

Now, my lords, in examining this question, you must proceed 
by the ordinary rule of construction, applicable alike to every 
statute ; that of expounding it by the usual acceptation and 
natural context of the words in which it is conceived. — Do the 
words then, my lords, or the natural context of this act, describe 
a limited power of rejecting only for cause to be assigned, or a 
peremptory power of rejecting without any such cause ? — Says 
the act, " If it shall happen that the commons shall reject or 
disapprove:" The law describes this accidental rejection in lan- 
guage most clearly applicable to the acts of men assembled, not 
as judges, but as electors, not to judge by laws which they have 
never learned, but to indulge their affections, or their caprice ; 
and therefore justly speaks of a rejection, not the result of judg- 
ment but of chance. 

" If it shall happen that they shall reject or disapprove ;" my 
lords, you cannot say these words are synonymous ; in acts every 
word must have its meaning if possible ; " To reject" contradis- 
tinguished to " disapprove," is to reject by an act of the will ; to 
disapprove, supposes some act of the judgment also. 

The act then clearly gives a right of rejecting, distinct from 
disapprobation, which by no possibility can be other than a pe- 
remptory right without limit or control. 

But here, if a reason must be had, the law would naturally 
prescribe some mode of having it demanded : — this, however, 
unluckily cannot be done without a direct violation of the act, 
which enjoins, that the two bodies shall " sit apart, by themselves 
as heretofore;" but at least it might have left the board of alder- 
men the means of making a silent struggle for the approbation 
of their favourite candidate, by sending him down again for re- 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 23 

consideration. But, on the contrary, tlie law is express, that 
"if the commons shall happen to reject or disapprove the first," 
they must then proceed to send down the name, not of him, but 
of another, and so on. — How long my lords ? Until a good reason 
shall be assigned for the rejection of the first 'i No, my lords, it 
is " until the commons shall approve of some one person, so sent 
down ;" and to this right of rejection, which the law has sup- 
posed might happen so often, the law has opposed the limit of a 
single proviso only, applicable enough to a peremptory right of 
rejection, but singular indeed, if applied to rejection for cause ; 
" Provided always, that such election into the said oflice of lord 
mayor, shall be of some person from among the aldermen, and 
that the commons shall approve of some one person so elected 
and returned to them for their approbation." — A rejection with- 
out cause to be assigned, being a mere popular privilege, may 
be limited in its extent by reasons of expediency ; but a judicial 
power of rejecting for legal cause cannot be so controlled with- 
out the grossest absurdity. It is like a peremptory challenge, 
which is given to a prisoner by the indulgence of the law, and 
may be therefore restricted within reasonable bounds. But a 
challenge for cause is given of common right, and must be 
allowed as often as it shall be found to exist, even though the 
criminal should remain for ever untried, and the crime for ever 
unpunished. 

Permit me now, my lords, to try this construction contended 
for by another test. Let us put it into the form of a proviso, and 
see how it accords with the proviso, which you find actually 
expressed : " Provided always, that the commons shall be 
obliged to approve of the first person whose name shall be sent 
down to them, unless they shall assign good legal cause for their 
rejection." The proviso expressed is, " Provided that they shall 
approve, not of the first person, but of some one person so elect- 
ed." Can any thing be more obvious than the inconsistency of 
two such provisoes ? 

Give me leave, my lords, to compare this supposed proviso with 
the enacting part of the statute. It says, that if the first person 
sent down be rejected, the lord mayor and aldermen shall " then 
proceed to elect another and send down his name ;" but if this 
supposed proviso were to make a part of the act, they would 
not be obliged to send down " another name," but would be au- 
2 C 



24 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

thorized to insist upon the claim of the first candidate, by de- 
manding a reason for his rejection. This supposed proviso, 
therefore, and of course this superinduced construction, is direct- 
ly incompatible both with the body and the proviso of the sta- 
tute itself. 

But see further, my lords, what you do by such a construction; 
you declare that the benefit of this statute, which is given ex- 
pressly to the commons, is given upon a tacit condition, by the 
breach of which that benefit is utterly forfeited. Do you think, 
my lords, you shall act consistently with the spirit of the consti- 
tution, or of the law of Ireland, if you declare and enforce a 
cause of forfeiture written in no law whatsoever, and devised 
only by your own interpretation? or do you not feel, my lords, to 
what a wretched state of servitude the subject is reduced, if 
criminaUty and forfeiture are to depend, not on the plain and 
permanent meaning of the law, but upon the dreams and visions 
of capricious interpretators ? If a constructive cause of forfeiture 
can be warranted, by which any part, or any individual, of a 
corporation shall be adjudged to have lost their franchise ; by 
the same principle may a constructive offence and forfeiture be 
devised, by which a whole corporation shall be stripped of its 
charter. Says the law, " If they shall omit or refuse to do what 
they are required to do by this act," they lose the benefit thereof: 
but this curious construction would declare, that the com- 
mons have forfeited the benefit of the statute, by refusing to 
do that, which they are not required by this or any other act 
to do. 

If then, my lords, you call this power of rejection or disappro- 
bation, a power to be regulated by technical maxims of the com- 
mon law, and to be exerted only for legal cause to be assigned ; 
what is it but to give the law a meaning which the legislature 
never spoke ? what is it but to nullify a statute made for the 
benefit of the people, by an arbitrary construction, supported 
only by the most pitiful of all argumentative fallacies, an assump- 
tion of what cannot be proved ; or, to describe it in terms more 
suited to its demerit, that mixture of logical poverty, and ethical 
meanness, which stoops to beg what it has not industry to acquire, 
nor craftiness to steal, nor force to extort. 

But see, my lords, whether this infallible rule of the common 
law, upon which the whole merits of this case have been rested, 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 25 

will not if admitted, be subversive of the authority which it would 
seem to support. 

By one of the new rules, and by a clause in this act of parlia- 
ment, no person can serve as mayor without the approbation of 
this board. This power of approving was notoriously given for 
the security of the government ; and hath now for upwards of a 
century been exercised upon no other ground whatever. By a 
clause in this act, no person can serve as mayor without the ap- 
probation of the commons, and this right of approbation, as no- 
toriously, was given to increase the power of the people ; and 
the commons have accordingly so exercised it uniformly for thirty 
years ; it is observable that this right of approbation is given to 
them in language more emphatical than it is to your lordships, 
but for argument sake I will suppose the words the same: now if 
by the common law, all right of approving or rejecting can be 
founded only upon legal cause to be assigned, what becomes of 
your lordships' decision 1 You have already refused your appro- 
bation to the two present petitioners, having both exactly the 
same pretensions to your approbation which they have at present ; 
you have refused your approbation, and you have assigned no 
cause: but let me ask a much more material question, what in 
that case becomes of your lordships' power 1 The same words in 
the same act of parliament cannot have two diflferent construc- 
tions : If the commons are bound to assign a legal cause for re- 
jection, you, my lords, must be similarly bound ; and the law will 
then coerce the commons, and coerce your lordships in a manner 
directly contrary to the intention of the act ; it will then cease 
to be a law for the protection of liberty on the one hand, or the 
security of government on the other ; for, being equally confined 
to a rejection for legal cause, the commons may be obliged to 
approve a candidate, not legally disqualified, though an enemy 
to their liberty, and your lordships be restrained from rejecting 
a candidate, not legally disqualified, though an enemy to the 
state. See then, my lords, to what you will be reduced : you 
must either admit, that the statute has confined you both equally 
to decide upon the mere question of legal capacity or incapacity 
only, of which they are clearly incapable of judging, and on 
which it is here admitted you are incompetent to decide, and 
has thus elevated them and degraded your lordships from good 
citizens and wise statesmen into bad judges; or if, in opposition 
d 



26 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

to this construction, you do your duty to your sovereign, and re- 
fuse to admit to the magistracy a man whom you have a good 
reason to bcHeve disatlected to the state, though subject to no 
legal incapacity ; what do you do, my lords? You give two dif- 
ferent expositions to the same words in the same act of parlia- 
ment ; that is, an enlarged exposition in favour of yourselves, 
and a confined one against the people ; that is in fact you are 
driven to incur the odium of repealing the law as against the 
crown, and enforcing it against the subject.* See on the other 
hand, my lords, how by the plain and hitherto adopted construc- 
tion, all these mischiefs are avoided. You judge of the candidate 
with respect to his loyalty, the commons with regard to his in- 
tegrity and independence ; neither of you with any relation to 
his legal capacity or incapacity ; thus will every object of the 
law, of the people, and of the government be completely obtain- 
ed, the commons will enjoy their power in deciding upon the 
popularity of the candidate for magistracy, you will do your 
duty in deciding upon his loyalty, and the courts of justice will 
retain their natural exclusive jurisdiction in every question that 
can touch his legal qualification ; thus will it be impossible for 
any man to have the power of the city in his hands, who is not 
free from all legal objections, and who is not also deserving the 
confidence of his sovereign, as well as of his fellow-subjects. 

Thus far, my lords, have I examined this law, with respect to 
the present question, b}"^ the general rule of construction, appli- 
cable generally to all statutes, that is, of seeking for the meaning 
of the legislature in the ordinary and natural context of the words 
they have thought proper to adopt ; and this, I thought, T might 
do with still more confidence in a law, professedly made for the 
direction of men unacquainted with legal difficulty, unversed in 
the subtilty of legal distinction, and acting in a situation which 
precludes them from the advantage of all legal assistance ; but I 
feel that what hath been satisfactory to my mind, hath not been 
so to some of your lordships. I feel myself, therefore, obliged to 
enter upon a more minute examination of this statute, upon 
principles and circumstances pecuhar to itself. 

* Tliis would really be the case, supposing the act of parliament had confined the 
right of the privy council to disapprove, and that of the common council to reject, to 
the legal cause of incapacity, and the privy council claimed for itself an unqualified pow- 
er of disapproving, while it denietl to the common council a similar power of rejecting. 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 27 

I am sorry, my lords, to trespass upon your patience ; but I am 
speaking upon a subject, in which if I do not succeed, the peo- 
ple of this country will have lost what is of infinitely more value 
than any time, however precious, that may be wasted in their 
defence. 

This act, my lords, professes to be a remedial act, and as such 
must be construed according to the rules peculiar to remedial 
laws : that is in three points of view ; first, the former state of 
the law ; secondly, the mischief of such former state ; and 
thirdly, the remedy proposed for the cure of that mischief. 

As to the first point : at the time of this statute the lord mayor 
and aldermen exercised the exclusive povver of election to the 
chief magistracy, without any interference of the commons. 
The immediate mischief of such a constitution, with respect to 
the metropolis itself, 1 have touched upon before ; the people 
were borne down ; the magistracy was depraved ; the law was 
relaxed, and the public tranquillity at an end. These mischiefs 
were more than enough to induce the citizens of Dublin to call 
loudly, as they did, upon the justice of the legislature for parli- 
amentary redress. But the wisdom of that legislature formed 
an estimate of the mischief from considerations that probably did 
not enter into the minds of the contending parties ; namely 
from the then state of Ireland as an individual, and as a 
connected country; as an individual depressed in every thing 
essential to the support of political or civil independency ; de- 
pressed in commerce, in opulence, and in knowledge ; distracted 
by that civil and religious discord, suggested by ignorance and 
bigotry, and inflamed by the artifice of a cruel policy, which 
divided in order to destroy, conscious that liberty could be 
banished only by disunion, and that a generous nation could not 
be completely stripped of her rights, until one part of the peo- 
ple was deluded into the foolish and wicked idea that its freedom 
and consequence could be preserved or supported only by the 
slavery or depression of the other. In such a country it was 
peculiarly necessary to establish at least some few incorporated 
bodies, which might serve as great repositories of popular 
strength : our ancestors learned from Great Britain to understand 
their use and their importance; in that country they had been 
hoarded up with the wisest forecast, and preserved with a reli- 
gious reverence, as an unfailing resource against those times of 



28 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

storm, in which it is the will of Providence that all human affairs 
should sometimes fluctuate ; and as such, they had been found 
at once a protection to the people and a security to the crown. — 
My lords, it is by the salutary repulsion of popular privilege 
that the power of the monarchy is supported in its sphere; with- 
draw that support and it falls in ruin upon the people, but it 
falls in a ruin no less fatal to itself, by which it is shivered to 
pieces. 

Our ancestors must therefore have been sensible that the en- 
slaved state of the corporation of the metropolis was a mischief 
that extended its effects to the remotest borders of the island. — 
In the confederated strength, and the united councils of great 
cities, the freedom of the country may find a safeguard which 
extends itself even to the remote inhabitant who never put his 
foot within their gates. 

But, my lords, how must these considerations have been en- 
forced by a view of Ireland, as a connected country, deprived 
as it was of almost all the advantages of an hereditary monarch : 
the father of his people residing at a distance, and the paternal 
beam reflected upon his children through such a variety of me- 
diums, sometimes too languidly to warm them, sometimes so 
intensely as to consume ; a succession of governors differing from 
one another in their tempers, in their talents, and in their virtues, 
and of course in their systems of administration ; unprepared in 
general for rule by any previous institution, and utterly unac- 
quainted with the people they were to govern, and with the men 
through whose agency they were to act. Sometimes, my lords, 
'tis true, a rare individual has appeared among uSj as if sent by 
the bounty of Providence in compassion to human miseries, 
marked by that dignified simplicity of manly character, which 
is the mingled result of an enlightened understanding, and an ele- 
vated integrity ; commanding a respect that he laboured not to 
inspire ; and attracting a confidence which it was impossible he 
could betray.* It is but eight years, my lords, since we have 
seen such a man amongst us, raising a degraded country from 
the condition of a province to the rank and consequence of a 
people, worthy to be the ally of a mighty empire, forming the 
league that bound her to Great Britain, on the firm and honour- 

* The duke of Portland, under whose administration Ireland obtained a free con- 
stitution. 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 29 

able basis of equal liberty and a common fate, " standing and 
falling with the British empire ;" and thus stipulating for that 
freedom which alone contains the principle of her political life, 
in the covenant of her federal connection. But how short is the 
continuance of those auspicious gleams of public sunshine ! how 
soon are they passed, and perhaps for ever ! In what rapid and 
fatal revolution has Ireland seen the talents and the virtues of 
such men give place to a succession of sordid parade, and empty 
pretension, of bloated promise, and lank performance, of austere 
hypocrisy and peculating economy !* Hence it is, my lords, 
that the administration of Ireland so often presents to the reader 
of her history, not the view of a legitimate government, but 
rather of an encampment in the country of a barbarous enemy : 
where the object of the invader is not government but conquest; 
where he is of course obliged to resort to the corrupting of clans, 
or of single individuals, pointed out to his notice by public abhor- 
rence, and recommended to his confidence only by a treachery 
so rank and consummate, as precludes all possibility of their re- 
turn to private virtue or to public reliance, and therefore only 
put into authority over a wretched country, condemned to the 
torture of all that petulant unfeehng asperity, with which a nar- 
row and malignant mind will bristle in unmerited elevation ; 
condemned to be betrayed, and disgraced, and exhausted by the 
httle traitors that have been suffered to nestle and to grow within 
it, making it at once the source of their grandeur, and the victim 
of their vices, reducing it to the melancholy necessity of sup- 
porting their consequence, and of sinking under their crimes, 
like the lion perishing by the poison of a reptile that finds shelter 
in the mane of the noble animal, while it is stinging him to 
death. 

By such considerations as these, my lords, might the makers 
of this statute have estimated the danger to which the liberty 
of Ireland was exposed ; and of course the mischief of having 

* The duke of Rutland and marquis of Buckingham quickly followed his grace. 
The first was marked by a love of dissipation, and undignified extravagance. The 
Marquis, upon his arrival in Ireland, led the country to expect a general retrenchment 
in the public expenses. Tliis expectation was terminated by the creation of fourteen 
new places for the purpose of parliamentary influence, countervailed indeed by a 
curtailment of the fuel allowed to the old soldiers of the royal hospital by the public 
bounty, and by abortive speculations upon the practicability of making one pair of boots 
serve for two troopers. 



30 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

that metropolis enslaved, by whose independency alone those 
dangers might be averted. But in this estimate they had much 
more than theory, or the observation of foreign events to show 
them, that the rights of the sovereign and of the subject were 
equally embarked in a common fate with that independency. 
When in the latter part of the reign of queen Anne, an infernal 
conspiracy was formed by the then chancellor, (Sir Constantine 
Phipps,) and the privy council, to defeat that happy succession 
which for three generations hath shed its auspicious influence 
upon these realms, they commenced their diabolical project with 
an attack upon the corporate rights of the citizens of Dublin, 
by an attempt to impose a disatlected lord mayor upon them 
contrary to the law. Fortunately, my lords, this wicked conspi- 
racy was defeated by the virtue of the people ; I will read to 
your lordships the resolutions of a committee of the house of 
commons on the subject. 

" First, resolved, that it is the opinion of this committee, that 
soon after the arrival of Sir Constantine Phipps, late lord chan- 
cellor, and one of the lords justices in this kingdom, in the year 
1710, a design was formed and carried on to subvert the consti- 
tution and freedom of elections of magistrates of corporations 
within the new rules, in order to procure persons to be returned 
for members of parliament, disaffected to the settlement of the 
crown, or his majesty and his royal issue." 

"2d. Resolved, that it is the opinion of this committee, that, in 
pursuance of that design, indirect and illegal methods were taken 
to subvert the ancient and legal course of electing magistrates in 
the city of Dublin. 

" 3d. Resolved, that it is the opinion of this committee, that 
the said Sir Constantine Phipps, and those engaged in that evil 
design, in less than five months, in the year 1711, procured six 
aldermen duly elected lord mayors, and fourteen substantial citi- 
zens duly elected sheriffs, and well known to be zealously affect- 
ed to the protestant succession, and members of the established 
church, to be disapproved, on the pretence that alderman Robert 
Constantine, as senior alderman, who had not been mayor, had a 
right to be elected lord mayor. 

" 4th. Resolved, that it is the opinion of this committee, that 
the senior alderman, who had not served as mayor, had not any 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 31 

right by charter, usage, or by law, in force in the city of Dublin, 
as such, to be elected lord mayor. 

" 5th. Resolved that it is the opinion of this committee, that the 
said Sir Constantine Phipps, and his accomplices, being unable 
to support the pretended right of seniority, did, in the year 1713, 
set up a pretended custom or usage for the mayor, in being, to 
nominate three persons to be in election for lord mayor, one of 
whom the aldermen were obliged to choose lord mayor." 

Lord Chancellor. — Can you think, Mr. Curran, that these 
resolutions of a committee of the house of commons can have any 
relation whatsoever to the present subject ? 

Mr. Curran. — T hope, my lords, you will think they have much 
relation indeed to the subject before you. The weakness of the 
city was the mischief which occasioned the act of parliament in 
question; to give the city strength, was the remedy. You must 
construe the law so as to suppress the former, and advance the 
latter. What topics then, my lords, can bear so directly upon 
the point of your inquiry, as the perils to be apprehended, from 
that weakness, and the advantages to be derived from that 
strength ? What argument then can be so apposite, as that which 
is founded on undeniable facts 1 Or what authority so cogent as 
the opinion of the representative wisdom of the nation, pro- 
nounced upon those facts, and transmitted to posterity upon record. 
On grounds like those, for I can conceive no other, do I suppose, 
the rights of the city were defended in the time to which I have 
alluded ; for it appears by the records which I have read, that 
the city was then heard by her counsel ; she was not denied the 
form of defence, though she was denied the benefit of the law. 
In this very chamber did the chancellor and judges sit, with all 
the gravity and affected attention to arguments in favour of that 
liberty and those rights which they had conspired to destroy. 
But to what end, my lords, offer argument to such men ? A lit- 
tle and a peevish mind may be exasperated, but how shall it be 
corrected by refutation ? How fruitless would it have been to 
represent to that wretched chancellor, that he was betraying 
those rights which he was sworn to maintain, that he was involv- 
ing a government in disgrace ; and a kingdom in panic and con- 
sternation ; that he was violating every sacred duty, and every 
solemn engagement that bound him to himself, his country, his 
sovereign, and his God ! — Alas, my lords, by what argument could 
2 D 



32 SPEECfl ON THE ELECTION OF 

any man hope to reclaim or to dissuade a mean, illiberal, and 
unprincipled minion of autliority, induced by his profligacy to 
undertake, and bound by his avarice and vanity to persevere ? 
He would probably have replied to the most unanswerable argu- 
ments, by some contumelious and unmeaning apophthegm, deli- 
vered with the fretful smile of irritated self-sufficiency and dis- 
concerted arrogance ; or, even if he could be dragged by his fears 
to a consideration of the question, by what miracle could the pig- 
my capacity of a stunted pedant be enlarged to a reception of the 
subject? The endeavour to approach it would have only remo- 
ved him to a greater distance than he was before : as a little 
hand that strives to grasp a mighty globe is thrown back by the 
re-action of its own effort to comprehend. — It may be given to 
a Hale, or a Hardwicke, to discover and retract a mistake ; 
the errors of such men are only specks that arise for a moment 
upon the surface of a splendid luminary ; consumed by its heat, 
or irradiated by its light, they soon purge and disappear ; but the 
perverseness of a mean and narrow intellect, are like the excres- 
cences that grow upon a body naturally cold and dark : no fire to 
waste them, and no ray to enlighten, they assimilate and coalesce 
with those qualities so congenial to their nature, and acquire an 
incorrigible permanency in the union with kindred frost and kin- 
dred opacity. Nor indeed, my lords, except where the interest 
of millions can be affected by the folly or vice of an individual, 
need it be much regretted, that, to things not worthy of being 
made better, it hath not pleased providence to afford the privi- 
lege of improvement. 

Lord Chancellor. — Surely, Mr. Curran, a gentleman of your 
eminence in your profession must see that the conduct of former 
privy councils has nothing to do with the question before us. 
The question lies in the narrowest compass ; it is merely whether 
the commons have a right of arbitrary and capricious rejection, 
or are obliged to assign a reasonable cause for their disapproba- 
tion. To that point you have a right to be heard ; but I hope 
you do not mean to lecture the council.* 

Mr. Curran. — I mean, my lords, to speak to the case of my cli- 

* from the frequent interruptions experienced by Mr. Curran in this part of his 
speech, it would appear that lord Clare perceived that the description of Sir Constan- 
tine Phipps was intended for himself. Those who best knew his lordship can judge 
of the justness of the representation. 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 33 

ents, and to avail myself of every topic of defence which I conceive 
applicable to that case. I am not speaking to a dry point of law, 
to a single judge, and on a mere forensic subject ; I am addressing a 
very large auditory, consisting of co-ordinate members, of whom the 
far greater number are not versed in law: were I to address such 
an audience on the interests and rights of a great city, and ad- 
dress them in the hackneyed style of a pleader, I should make a 
very idle display of profession, with very little information to 
those I address, or benefit to those on whose behalf I have the 
honour to be heard. I am aware, my lords, that truth is to be 
sought only by slow and painful progress ; I know also that error 
is in its nature flippant and compendious ; it hops with airy and 
fastidious levity over proofs and arguments, and perches upon as- 
sertion, which it calls conclusion. 

Here the lord chancellor moved to have the chamber cleared; 
after some time the doors w^ere opened.* 

My lords, I was regretting the necessity which I am under of 
trespassing so much on that indulgent patience with which I feel 
I am so honoured ; let me not, however, my lords, be thought so 
vainly presumptuous as to suppose that condescension bestowed 
merely upon me ; I feel how much more you owe it to your own 
dignity and justice, and to a full conviction that you could not be 
sure of deciding with justice, if you did not hear with temper. 

As to my part, my lords, I am aware that no man can convince 
by arguments which he cannot clearly comprehend, and make 
clearly intelligible to others ; I consider it therefore, not only an 
honour, but an advantage, to be stopped when I am not understood. 
So much confidence have I in the justice of my cause, that I wish 
any noble lord in this assembly would go with me step by step 
through the argument ; one good effect would inevitably result ; 
I should either have the honour of convincing the noble lord, or 
the public would, by my refutation, be satisfied that they are in 
the wrong: with this wish, and, if I may presume to say so, with 
this hope, I will proceed to a further examination of the subject. 

It is a rule of law, that all remedial acts shall be so construed 
as to suppress the mischief, and advance the remedy ; now a good 

* During the exclusion of strangers, it was understood that lord Clare moved the 
council, that Mr. Curran should be restrained by their lordships' authority from pro- 
ceeding farther in that line of argument he was then pursuing ; but his lordship be- 
ing over-ruled, Mr. Curran proceeded. 

e 



34 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

cause of rejection can mean only a legal cause ; that is, a cause 
working an incapacity in the person executing a corporate fran- 
chise ; that is, of course, such a cause as would justify a judgment 
of ouster against him by a court of law, if actually in possession 
of such franchise ; or warrant his removal, by an act of the cor- 
poration itself. There are three sorts of offences for which a 
corporator may be amoved; first, such as have no immediate re- 
lation to his oftice, but are in themselves of so infamous a nature 
as to render the offender unfit to exercise any public franchise ; 
secondly, such as are ojily against his oath, and the duty of his 
office as a corporator, and amount to a breach of the tacit 
condition annexed to his franchise or office ; the third sort of of- 
fence for which an officer or corporator may be displaced is of a 
mixed nature, as being an offence, not only against the duty of 
his office, but also a matter indictable at common law. 

For the first species of offences, a corporation can in no case 
amove without a previous indictment and conviction in a court 
of common law. For the other offences, it has a power of trial, 
as well as a motion. 

To this let me add, that the office of alderman is as much a 
corporate office as that of lord mayor, and the legal cause that 
disqualifies the one must equally disqualify the other ; but the 
person chosen to be mayor must be an alderman at the time of 
his election, and the law, of course, cannot suppose a man, ac- 
tually in possession of a corporate franchise, to labour under any 
corporate or legal incapacity : does it not then, my lords, follow 
irresistibly, that the law cannot intend to confine the power of 
rejection, which it expressly gives, to a legal incapacity, which, 
without the grossest absurdity, it cannot suppose to exist ? 

But let us assume, for argument sake, however in defiance of 
common sense, that the legislature did suppose it possible, that 
such an incapacity might exist , what new privilege does a power 
of rejection for such cause give to the commons ? And it is ad- 
mitted by the learned counsel, " that this statute made a great 
enlargement, indeed, in iheir powers." Before the act was made, 
any corporator, subject to a personal disqualification, was re- 
moveable by the ordinary course of law ; to give the commons, 
therefore, only a power of preventing a man, legally disqualified, 
from serving a corporate office, was giving them nothing which 
they had not before. 



LORD MAYOR OP DUBLIN. 30 

What sort of construction, then, my lords, must that be which 
makes the legislature fall into the ridiculous absurdity of giving 
a most superfluous remedy for a most improbable mischief ? And 
yet it is not in a nursery for children, nor a bedlam of madmen; but 
it is in an assembly, the most august that this country knows of, 
that I am obliged to combat this perversion of sense and of law. 
In truth, my lords, I feel the degradation of gravely opposing a 
wild chimera, that could not find a moment's admission into any in- 
structed or instituted mind ; but I feel also, that they who stoop 
to entertain it only from the necessity of exposing and subduing it, 
cannot at least be the first object of that degradation. 

Let me then, my lords, try this construction contended for, by 
another test. If the act must be construed so as to say that the 
commons can reject only for a legal cause to be assigned, it must be 
so construed, as to provide for all that is inseparably incident, and 
indispensably necessary to carrying that construction into effect : 
that is, it must provide a mode, in which four things may be 
done : 

First, a mode in which such cause shall be assigned. 

Secondly, a mode in which the truth of the fact of such cause 
shall be admitted or controverted. 

Thirdly, a mode by which the truth of such fact, if contro- 
verted, shall be tried ; and. 

Fourthly, a mode by which the validity of such cause, when 
ascertained in fact, shall be judged of in law. To suppose a con- 
struction requiring a reason to be assigned, without providing for 
these inevitable events, would be not the error of a lawyer, but 
would sink beneath the imbecility of an infant. 

Then, my lords, as to the first point : how is the cause to be 
assigned? The law expressly precludes the parties from any 
means of conference by enacting that they shall " sit apart and 
by themselves." The same law says, that " the rejection or dis- 
approbation shall be by ballot only, and not otherwise." Now 
when the law gives the commons a power of rejecting by ballot, 
it gives each individual a protection against the enmity which he 
would incur from the rejected candidate ; but if you say that 
the rejection shall be null and void, unless fortified by the as- 
signment of legal cause, see, my lords, what you labour to eflfect : 
under this supposed construction, you call upon the voters who 
reject by a secret vote, to relinquish that protection of secrecy 



36 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OP 

which tlie law expressly gives them ; unless, my lords, the saga- 
city, that has broached this construction can tind out some way, 
by which the voter can justify why he voted against a particular 
candidate, without disclosing also, that he did in fact vote against 
that candidate. 

Let me, however, suppose that inconsistency reconciled, and 
follow the idea. 

The name of alderman James is sent down, and the commons 
certify his rejection; an ambassador is then sent to demand of 
the commons the cause of this rejection. — They answer, " Sir, we 
have rejected by ballot, and they who have voted against him 
are protected by the law from discovering how they voted." To 
which the ambassador replies, "very true, gentlemen, but you 
mistake their worships' question ; they do not desire you to say 
who rejected Mr. James, for in that they well know they could 
not be warranted by law ; they only desire to know why a ma- 
jority has voted against Mr. alderman James. — This, my lords, I 
must suppose to be a mode of argument not unbecoming the sa- 
gacity of aldermen, since I find that it gives occasion to a serious 
question before so exalted an assembly as I have now the honour 
to address ; I will, therefore, suppose it conclusive with the com- 
mons; a legal reason must be assigned for their rejection. — Pray, 
my lords, who is to assign that legal reason 1 Is it the minority 
who voted for the rejected candidate? I should suppose not. It 
must be then the majority who voted for the rejection. — Pray, 
my lords, who are they 1 By what means shall they be discov- 
ered ? 

But I will suppose that every member of the commons is will- 
ing to adopt the rejection, and to assign a cause for it. One man, 
suppose a friend of the rejected candidate, alleges a cause of a re- 
jection in which he did not in reality concur, and which cause 
he takes care shall be invalid and absurd ; as for instance, the 
plumpness of the person of Mr. James ;* if he did not vote for 
the rejection, he can have no right to assign a cause for it ; the 
question then is, did he vote for the rejection ? I beg leave, my 
lords, to know how that is to be tried ? 

But suppose, to get rid of a difficulty, otherwise insurmountable, 



* The person of the alderman is of the full regulation dimensions. He might well 
say of himself, with relation to his brother justices, "CLuorum pars magna fui." 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 37 

it shall be agreed in direct contradiction to common sense and 
justice, that every member of the commons shall be authorized 
to assign a legal cause of rejection ; (and in truth if he may as- 
sign one, he may assign more than one, if he is disposed to do so ;) 
suppose then, my lords, that one hundred and forty-six causes are 
assigned, for such may be their number, though no one member 
assigns more than a single cause ; if they may be all assigned, 
they must be all disposed of according to law ; but which shall 
be first put into a course of trial ? How shall the right of prece- 
dence be divided? But I will suppose that also settled, and a single 
cause is assigned ; that cause must be a legal disability of some of 
the kinds which I have already mentioned; for there cannot be any 
other. The cause then assigned, in order to prevail, must be true 
in fact and valid in law, and amount to a legal incapacity. And 
here, let me observe, that a legal cause of incapacity, as it can 
be founded only on the commission of an infamous crime, or of some 
fact contrary to the duty and oath of a corporator, must, if allow- 
ed, imprint an indelible stigma on the reputation of the man so 
rejected. I ask, then, is the accusation of malignity, or credulity, 
or folly to be taken for true 1 Or shall the person have an oppor- 
tunity of defending himself against the charge ? The cause for 
which he can be rejected is the same with the cause for which he 
can be disfranchised ; they are equally causes working an incapa- 
city to hold a corporate franchise ; their consequences are the same 
to the person accused ; loss of franchise, and loss of reputation. The 
person accused therefore, if by the construction of a statute he is 
exposed to accusation, must by the same construction be entitled 
to every advantage in point of defence, to which a person so ac- 
cused is entitled by the general law of the land. What, then, 
are those advantages to which a corporator is entitled, when 
charged with any fact as a foundation for incapacity or dis- 
franchisement ? He must have due and timely notiee of the 
charge, that he may prepare for his defence ; every corporator 
must have timely and express notice of the specific charge against 
him, that nothing may be done by surprise on either side. Now, 
my lords, you will condescend to observe, that the time supposed 
by this statute for the whole business of election is a single day ; 
is it then possible to give every member of the board of aldermen, 
for each of them may be a candidate, due notice of every charge 
of legal disability that may be possibly made against them ? Or 



38 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

if it be not, as it manifestly is not, will you, my lords, create a 
construction which exposes any subject of the land to trial with- 
out notice, and to conviction and forfeiture without that opportu- 
nity of defence to which he is entitled of natural justice and 
common right ? 

But I will suppose that your lordships may adopt this construc- 
tion, however it may supersede the right of the subject and the 
law of the land ; I will suppose that the candidate may be ac- 
cused at a moment's warning. — Is bare accusation to hold the 
place of conviction ? Shall the alderman, whose name is sent 
down, and who is rejected for an alleged personal disabiUty, have 
an opportunity of defending himself against the charge of the 
commons ? He cannot have the privilege of the meanest felon, 
of standing before his accusers ; for, as an alderman, he must re- 
main with his brethren, " separate and apart by themselves. 
He cannot then plead for himself in person, nor by the law can 
he depute an attorney to defend in his name, for the commons 
are not authorised to admit any strangers amongst them. It is 
therefore utterly out of his power to deny the charge against 
him, however false in fact it may happen to be. 

But I will suppose, if you please, that the charge is denied, 
and issue joined upon the fact ; I beg leave to ask, if this sup- 
posed construction provides any mode of calling the jury, or 
summoning the witnesses, on whose testimony, and on whose ver- 
dict a citizen is to be tried upon a charge of corporate or legal 
culpability ? But let me, my lords, with the profoundest respect, 
press this wicked and silly nonsense a little farther : suppose the 
charge admitted in fact, but the validity of it denied ; who, my 
lords, is to judge of it by virtue of this construction 1 A point 
of law is to be decided between the lord mayor and aldermen 
who have chosen, and the commons who have rejected. What 
is the consequence 1 If the lord mayor and aldermen decide, 
they judge in their own cause ; if the commons decide, they 
judge in their own cause, contrary to the maxim " J\emo judex 
i?i propria causa ;" can you then, my lords, think yourselves war- 
ranted in adopting a construction, which supposes a legal charge 
to be made, in which the accused has not the advantage of no- 
tice, or the means of defence, or of legal trial, and on which, if 
any judgment be pronounced, it must be pronounced by the 
parties in the cause, in direct opposition to the law of the land. 



LORD MAYOR OP DUBLIN. 39 

But, my lords, it seems all these defects in point of accusation, 
of defence, of trial, and of judgment, as the ingenious gentlemen 
have argued, are cured by the magical virtue of those beans, by 
whose agency the whole business must be conducted. 

If the law had permitted a single word to be exchanged be- 
tween the parties, the learned counsel confess that much diffi- 
culty might arise in the events which I have stated ; but they 
have found out that all these difficulties are prevented or re- 
moved by beans and the ballot. According to these gentlemen, 
we are to suppose one of those unshaven demagogues, whom the 
learned counsel have so humorously described, rising in the 
commons when the name of alderman James is sent down ; he 
begins by throwing out a torrent of seditious invective against 
the servile profligacy and liquorish venality of the board of al- 
dermen — this he does by beans ! — Having thus previously in- 
flamed the passions of his fellows, and somewhat exhausted his own, 
his judgment collects the reins that floated on the neck of his ima- 
gination, and he becomes grave, compressed, sententious, and 
didactic ; he lays down the law of personal disability, and cor- 
porate criminality, and corporate forfeiture, with great precision, 
with sound emphasis and good discretion, to the great delight 
and edification of the assembly — and this he does by beans ! — 
He then proceeds, my lords, to state the specific charge against 
the unfortunate candidate for approbation, with all the artifice 
and malignity of accusation, scalding the culprit in tears of affec- 
ted pity, bringing forward the blackness of imputed guilt through 
the varnish of simulated commiseration ; bewailing the horror 
of his crime, that he may leave it without excuse ; and invoking 
the sympathy of his judges, that he may steel them against 
compassion — and this, my lords, the unshaven demagogue doth 
by beans ! — The accused doth not appear in person, for he can- 
not leave his companions, nor by attorney, for his attorney could 
not be admitted — but he appears and defends by beans ! At 
first, humble and deprecatory, he conciliates the attention of his 
judges to his defence, by giving them to hope that it may be 
vdthout effect ; he does not alarm them by any indiscreet asser- 
tion that the charge is false ; but he slides upon them arguments 
to show it improbable ; by degrees, however, he gains upon the 
assembly, and denies and refutes, and recriminates and retorts — 
all by beans, — until at last he challenges his accuser to a trial, 
2 E 



40 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

which is accordingly had, in the course of which the depositions 
are taken, the facts tried, the legal doubts proposed and ex- 
plained — by beans ! — and in the same manner the law is settled 
with an exactness and authority that remains a record of juris- 
prudence, for the information of future ages ; while at the same 
time the " harmony" of the metropolis is attuned by the marvel- 
lous temperament of jarring discord ; and the " good will" of the 
citizens is secured by the indissoluble bond of mutual crimhiation, 
and reciprocal abhorrence. 

By this happy mode of decision, one hundred and forty-six 
causes of rejection (for of so many do the commons consist, each 
of whom must be entitled to a distinct cause) are tried in the 
course of a single day with satisfaction to all parties. 

With what surprise and delight must the heart of the fortunate 
inventor have glowed, when he discovered those wonderful in- 
struments of wisdom and of eloquence, which, without being obli- 
ged to commit the precious extracts of science, or persuasion, to 
the faithless and fragile vehicles of words or phrases, can serve 
every process of composition or abstraction of ideas, and every 
exigency of discourse or argumentation, by the resistless strength 
and infinite variety of beans, white or black, or boiled, or raw ; 
displaying all the magic of their powers in the mysterious exer- 
tions of dumb investigation, and mute discussion ; of speechless 
objection and tongue-tied refutation! 

Nor should it be forgotten, my lords, that this noble discovery 
does no little, honour to the sagacity of the present age, by ex- 
plaining a doubt that has for so many centuries perplexed the 
labour of philosophic inquiry ; and furnishing the true reason why 
the pupils of Pythagoras were prohibited the use of beans : it can- 
not, I think, my lords, be doubted, that the great author of the 
metempsychosis found out that those mystic powers of persuasion, 
which vulgar naturalists supposed to remain lodged in minerals, 
or fossils, had really transmigrated into beans ; and he could not 
therefore but see, that it would have been fruitless to preclude 
his disciples from mere oral babbling, unless he had also debarred 
them from the indulgence of vegetable loquacity. 

My lords, I have hitherto endeavoured to show, and I hope not 
without success, that this act of parliament gives to the commons 
a peremptory right of rejection ; that the other construction gives 
no remedy whatsoever for the mischief which occasioned its being 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 41 

passed ; and cannot by any possible course of proceeding be car- 
ried into effect. I will take the liberty now of giving an answer 
to some objections relied upon by the counsel for Mr. James, and 
I will do it with a conciseness, not, I trust, disproportioned to their 
importance. 

They say that a peremptory rejection in the commons takes 
away all power whatsoever from the board of aldermen : to that 
I answer, that the fact and the principle is equally against them: 
the fact, because that board is the only body from which a lord 
mayor can be chosen ; and has, therefore, the very great power 
that results from exclusive eligibility ; the principle, because if the 
argument be, that the lord mayor and aldermen ought to have 
some power in such election, by a parity of reason, so ought 
the commons, who, if they can reject only for a legal incapa- 
city, will be ousted of all authority whatsoever in such election, 
and be reduced to a state of disfranchisement by such a con- 
struction. 

The gentlemen say, that your lordships can only inquire into 
the prima facie title, and that the claim of Mr. James is, prima 
facie, the better claim. 

I admit, my lords, you are not competent to pronounce any 
judgment that can bind the right. But give me leave to observe, 
first, that the question, upon which you yourselves have put this 
inquiry, is a question applicable only to the very right, and by 
no possibility applicable to ?i prima facie title. 

One of your lordships has declared the question to be, " Whe- 
ther by the common law, a mere power of approbation or rejection 
can supersede a power of election ?' If that question is warrant- 
ed in assuming the fact, give me leave to say, that the answer 
to it goes directly to the right, and to nothing else ; for if the 
commons are bound by law to assign a cause of rejection, and have 
not done so, Mr. James had clearly the legal right of election, 
and Mr. Howison has no right or title whatsoever. 

But I say further ; The mode of your inquiry makes it ridicu- 
lous to argue, that you have not entered into any disquisition of 
the right : Why, my lords, examine witnesses on both sides ? Why 
examine the books of the corporation ? Why examine into every 
fact relating to the election ? 

I cannot suppose, my lords, that you inquired into facts, upon 
which you thought yourselves incompetent to form any decision; 
/ 



42 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OF 

I cannot suppose you to admit an extra judicial inquiry, by 
which the members of a corporation may be drawn into admis- 
sions that may expose them to the future danger of prosecution 
or disfranchisement. 

I hope, my lords, I shall not be deemed so presumptuous, as to 
take upon me to say, why you have gone into these examinations ; 
it is not my province to justify your lordships' proceedings : it 
stands upon your own authority ; I am only answering an argu- 
ment, and I answer it by showing it inconsistent with that pro- 
ceeding. 

Let me, my lords, pursue the idea a little further. Are you 
only inquiring into a prima facie title 1 What is a prima facie 
title 1 I conceive it to be a title, not which may possibly be found 
a good one upon future examination ; but, which is good and va- 
lid, and must prevail, unless it be opposed and defeated by 
another, which may possibly be adduced, but which does not 
then appear. So in an ejectment at law, for instance, a plain- 
tiff must make a title, or he is non-suited. If he makes out a le- 
gal title i7i omnibus, the court declares it 2i prima facie title; that 
is, a title conclusive as to the right, unless a better shall be shown, 
and accordingly calls on the defendant to show such better title 
if he can ; the moment the defendant produces his title, the ques- 
tion of prima facie title is completely at an end ; and the court 
has no longer any question to decide upon, but the very merits ; 
and this for a plain reason : The question, whether prima facie 
a good title or not, is decided upon the single ground that no 
other title then appears with which the title shown can be com- 
pared ; in short, my lords, whether prima facie good, is a question 
confined only to the case of a single title, and cannot be applied, 
without the grossest absurdity, to a case where you have both 
the titles actually before you. It may be the question in case of a 
single return ; in case of a double return, as here, it cannot by 
any possibility be the question. 

But, my lords, let me carry this a little further yet. You have 
both the titles before you. — You have yourselves declared, that 
the question turns upon the construction of this act of parliament, 
which enacts also, " That it shall be deemed a public act, in 
all courts, and in all places." 

Now is it contended, the construction of the act is prima facie, 
in favour of Mr. James? 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 43 

May I presume to ask, what does the prima fade construction 
of a statute import ? It must import, if it import any thing, that 
meaning which, for aught then appearing, is true ; but may pos- 
sibly, because of something not then appearing, turn out not to 
be so. Now, nothing can possibly be opposed to that prima facie 
construction save the act itself. A prima facie construction of 
a statute, therefore, can be nothing but the opinion that rises in 
the mind of a man, upon a single reading of it, who does not 
choose to be at the trouble of reading it again. In truth, my 
lords, I should not have thought it necessary to descend to this 
kind of argumentation, if it had not become necessary for me to 
do so, by an observation coming from one of your lordships,* 
" That the letter of the act would bear out the commons in their 
claim; but that the sound construction might be a very different 
thing." I will, therefore, add but another word upon this sub- 
ject : — If a prima facie construction be sufficient to decide, and 
if the commons have the letter of the law in their favour, I would 
ask with the profoundest humility, whether your lordships will 
give the sanction of your high authority to a notion, that, in sta- 
tutes made to secure the liberties of the people, the express words 
in which they are written shall not be at least a prima facie evi- 
dence of their signification 1 

My lords, the learned counsel have been pleased to make a 
charge against the citizens of Dublin, " for their tests and their 
cavalcadings" on a late occasion ; and they have examined wit- 
nesses in support of their accusation. It is true, my lords, the 
citizens did engage to the public, and to one another, that they 
would not vote for any candidate for corporate office or popu- 
lar representation, who had any place in the poUce establish- 
ment. But I would be glad to know by what law it is criminal 
in freemen to pledge themselves to that conduct which they 
think indispensably necessary to the freedom of their country. 
The city of Dublin is bound to submit to whatever mode of de- 
fence shall be devised for her by law, while such law shall con- 
tinue unrepealed ; but I would be glad to learn, by what law 
they are bound not to abhor the police institution, expensive, and 
ineffectual, inadequate to their protection, and dangerous to their 
liberty ; and that they do think it so, cannot be doubted. Ses- 
sion after session has the floor of the senate been covered with 
♦ Lord Clare. 



44 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION OP 

their petitions, praying to be relieved against it, as an oppressive, 
a corrupt, and therefore an execrable establishment. 

True it is also, my lords, they have been guilty of those trium- 
phant processions, which the learned counsel have so heavily con- 
demned. The virtue of the people stood forward to oppose an 
attempt to seize upon their representation, by the exercise of a 
dangerous and unconstitutional influence, and it succeeded in the 
conflict ; it routed and put to flight that corruption, which sat, 
like an incubus, on the heart of the metropolis, chaining the cur- 
rent of its blood, and locking up every healthful function and 
energy of life. The learned counsel might have seen the city 
pouring out her inhabitants, as if to share the general joy of es- 
caping from some great calamity, in mutual gratulation and pub- 
lic triumph.* — But why does the learned counsel insist upon this 
subject before your lordships? Does he think such meetings 
illegal 1 He knows his profession too well, not to know the re- 
verse. — But does he think it competent to the lord lieutenant 
and council of Ireland to take cognizance of such facts, or to pro- 
nounce any opinion whatever concerning the privileges of the 
people ? He must know it is not — Does he then mean that such 
things may be subjects of your resentment, though not of your 
jurisdiction ? It would have been worth while, before that point 
had been pressed, to consider between what parties it must sup- 
pose the present contest to subsist. To call upon the government 
of the country to let their vengeance fall upon the people for 
their resistance of unconstitutional influence, is surely an appeal 
not very consistent with the virtuous impartiality of this august 
assembly. It is only for those who feel defeat, to feel resentment 
or to think of vengeance. 

But suppose for a moment, (and there never ought to be rea- 
son to suppose it,) that the opposition of the city had been di- 
rectly to the views or the wishes of the government ; why are 
you, therefore, called upon to seize its corporate rights into your 
hands, or to force an illegal magistrate upon it ? Is it insinuated 
that it can be just to punish a want of complaisance, by an act 
of lawless outrage and arbitrary power ? Does the British con- 

* The cavalcadings here spoken of took place on the election of Mr. Grattan and 
lord H. Fitzgeraklj who had been returned for the city of Dublin in opposition to the 
court candidates, one of whom was alderman Warren then at the head of the polica 
establishment. 



LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN. 45 

stitution, my lords, know of such offences, or does it warrant 
this species of tyrannical reprisal 1 And, my lords, if the injus- 
tice of such is without defence, what argument can be offered 
in support of its prudence or policy ? It was once the calamity 
of England to have such an experiment made by the last of the 
Stuarts, and the last of that unhappy race because of such ex- 
periments. The several corporations of that country were stript 
of their charters : and what was the consequence 1 I need not 
state them ; they are notorious ; yet, my lords, there was a time 
when he was willing to relinquish what he had so weakly and 
wickedly undertaken ; but there is a time when concession 
comes too late to restore either public quiet, or public confidence; 
and when it amounts to nothing more than an acknowledgment 
of injustice ; when the people must see, that it is only the screen 
behind which oppression changes her attack, from force to fraud, 
from the battery to the mine. See then, my lords, how such a 
measure comes recommended ; its principle injustice, its motive 
vengeance, its adoption sanctioned by the authority of a tyrant, 
or the example of a revolution. 

My lords, the learned counsel has made another observation 
which I cannot pass without remark ; it is the last with which I 
shall trouble you. He says, the commons may apply to the law, 
and bring an information in quo warranto against Mr. James, 
though you should give him your approbation ; that is, my lords, 
your judgment does not bind the right, it only decides the posses- 
sion of the office. To this I answer, that in this case, to decide 
on the possession is, in fact, to decide the contest ; and I found 
that answer on the high authority of the noble lord, who was 
pleased to say, that " when the city had spent three years in 
the king's bench, she would probably grow sick of the contest."* 
I was not surprised, my lords, to hear an expression of that re- 
gret which must arise in every worthy mind^; and I am sure the 
noble lord sincerely felt at the distress of a people reduced to 
defend those rights which ought never to have been attacked, and 
to defend them in a way by which they could not possibly succeed. 
The truth is, as the noble lord has stated, the time of Mr. James's 
mayoralty would expire in a year, and the question of law could 
not be terminated in three ; the present contest, therefore, can- 

♦ The lord chancellor. 



46 SPEECH ON THE ELECTION, &c. 

not be decided by law. How then, my lords, is it to be de- 
cided 1 Are the people to submit tamely to oppression, or are 
they to struggle for their liberties 'I I trust, my lords, you will 
think they have not done any thing so culpable as can justify 
the driving them to so calamitous a necessity ; for fatal must that 
struggle be, in whatsoever country it shall happen, in which the 
liberties of a people can find no safety but in the efforts of vin- 
dictive virtue; fatal to all parties, whatsoever may be the 
event. But, my lords, I feel this to be a topic on which it is 
neither my province nor my wish to expatiate, and I leave it 
the more willingly, because T know that I have already tres- 
passed very long upon your patience, and also, because I cannot 
relinquish a hope, that the decision of your lordships this day 
will be such as shall restore the tranquillity of the public mind, 
the mutual confidence between the government and the people, 
and make it unnecessary for any man to pursue so painful a 
subject. 

The lord lieutemmt and privy council conjirmed the election of 
the commons, in the jiersoJi of alderman Hozoison,for lord mayor. 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

ON MOVING THAT IT IS THE EXCLUSIVE PRIVILEGE OF THE 
HOUSE OF COMMONS TO ORIGINATE MONEY BILLS. 

Tuesday, December 16, 1783. 



Mr. Curran. — While I reflect that the motion I am now going 
to make is of the utmost importance to the honour, and even ex- 
istence of this house, and that I have given full notice of my inten- 
tion, I am much surprised at the little regard that seems intended 
to be paid to it, as is manifest from the emptiness of those benches. 
— This, sir, is not a question of party ; I never did, nor ever w^ill 
attach myself to party ; and though I mean to move the resolu- 
tion from this side of the house, yet it concerns both sides equally : 
it goes to assert the privileges of the people of Ireland represent- 
ed in this house of commons ; and I say every party, and every 
description of men in this house is equally concerned in support- 
ing it. I say it is the sole and exclusive right of the commons of 
Ireland to originate and frame money bills in such manner as they 
shall think proper ; and the resolution I intend to propose is only 
to vindicate this privilege from the encroachments of a neigh- 
bouring assembly, which has lately, by certain resolutions, inva- 
ded this right, this palladium of the constitution, which I trust 
every man in the house will think himself bound to defend. 

I am sorry to say that the constitution of Ireland is so young, 
that I need not go back to a very remote period, to prove that 
the exclusive right of originating and framing money bills has 
always resided in this house ; but for thirty years back it cer- 
tainly has ; and in England, from whence we derived our consti- 
tution, it always has been the practice. The peers and the 
crown possess an undoubted right of rejecting such bills in tolo; 
but in the commons alone resides the power of originating or 
2 F 47 



48 SPEECH ON THE PRIVILEGE 

framing them ; the very mode of giving the royal assent to such 
bills demonstrates that the commons alone are the source from 
which they flow. His majesty thanks his faithful commons, ac- 
cepts their benevolence, and wills it to be so ; and this mode ob- 
tains both in Britain and here. To whom should the people of 
Ireland look for the redress of grievances, for the encouragement 
of arts, for the promotion of commerce, but to their representa- 
tives in this house ? What powerful engine has this house, by 
which it can obtain the redress of grievances, the encouragement 
of arts, or the promotion of commerce, but by including those ob- 
jects in the bill of supply ? And if the right be once given up, 
or wrested from the commons, they cease to be the patrons and 
representatives of the people ; another assembly will assume 
that power, and the people will learn to look for that encourage- 
ment and support from the aristocratic, which they now receive 
from the democratic branch of the state ; and this house will be- 
come a very cypher, and its members, instead of possessing the 
power of encouraging arts, rewarding merit, or, in a word, 
of serving the country, will become the humble solicitors of 
another assembly. 

From the reign of Henry the third, the power of annexing the 
redress of grievances to money bills has been the constitutional 
privilege of the commons of England ; the practice of inserting 
such clauses as the commons have deemed proper, has obtained 
in Ireland for more than thirty years, and, to any person acquaint- 
ed with our constitution, must, at the slightest view, appear to be 
their inherent right : I cannot therefore suppose this house will 
be silent when this privilege is invaded by another assembly ; no 
man entertains a higher opinion of that assembly than I do, and 
I am persuaded that so great is their lordship's wisdom, that when, 
this matter is duly considered by them, they will see the impro- 
priety of two resolutions which appear upon their journals of 
the fourth and fifth of the present month, to this effect, " That 
all grants made to private manufacturers ought to be made in 
separate acts, and that enacting clauses in bills of supply, the 
matter of which is foreign to the bill, is unparliamentary, and 
tends to destroy the constitution of this kingdom." That the il- 
lustrious assembly to which I allude has passed such a resolution 
is notorious, and cannot be denied; it is inserted in their journals, 
-ind has been seen by many members of this house : the formality 



TO ORIGINATE MONEY BILLS. 49 

therefore of appointing a conunitlee to inspect their lordships' 
journals is unnecessary, and all that remains for the commons is 
to vindicate their own privileges by a mild and temperate reso- 
lution which I shall propose to the house ; for even admitting that 
sometimes a house of commons has erred in making improper 
grants, we should rather reform ourselves, and determine not to 
err again, than submit to have a monitor over us. 

If I was addressing a house of commons the most virtuous or 
the most corrupt, I should expect to be supported in this measure ; 
for I would say to a virtuous house of commons, the privilege of 
originating and framing money bills is the palladium of your lib- 
erty, the great engine to restrain oppression, to redress grievan- 
ces, or to encourage merit. I would say to a corrupt house of 
commons, it is the palladium of your corruption, the security of 
the wages of your venality, the means by which you may obtain 
the reward of your prostitution ; or if I was addressing a house 
containing both descriptions, both kinds of argument would be 
applicable. But to the house before which I stand, surely the 
arguments which I have first used, the arguments of virtue and 
of honour will be sufficient ; to them therefore I shall trust. 

I lament that a learned and right honourable member, with 
whom I once had the happiness of living on terms of friendship, 
is now absent ; because I think I might rely upon his supporting 
the resolution I intend to propose ; that support would perhaps 
renew the intercourse of our friendship, which has lately been in- 
terrupted. And I must beg the indulgence of the house to say, 
that that friendship was on the footing of perfect equality, not 
imposed by obligation on the one side, or bound by gratitude on 
the other ; for I thank God, when that friendship commenced 1 
was above receiving obligation from any man, and therefore our 
friendship, as it was more pure and disinterested, as it depended 
on a sympathy of minds and a congeniaUty of sentiments, I 
trusted would have endured the longer. I think myself bound 
to make this public declaration, as it has gone forth from this 
house, that I am a man of ingratitude ; and to declare, that for 
any difference of opinion with my learned and right honourable 
friend I cannot be taxed with ingratitude ; for that I never re- 
ceived any obligation from him, but lived on a footing of perfect 
equality, save only so far as his great talents and erudition out- 
went mine. 

g 



50 SPEECH ON THE PRIVILEGE, &c. 

I confess my obligation to the house for this indulgence of 
speaking a few words foreign to the debate, but which every 
man must think I owed to my own character : and that I may 
detain gentlemen no longer, I shall briefly move : 

" That it is the sole and undoubted privilege of the commons 
of Ireland to originate all bills of supply and grants of public 
money, in such manner and with such clauses as they shall think 
proper." 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

ON ATTACHMENTS. 

Thursday, February 24, 1785. 



Mr. Curran said he hoped he might say a few words on this 
great subject, without disturbing the sleep of any right honour- 
able member, (the attorney general having fallen asleep on his 
seat,) and yet, perhaps, added he, I ought rather to envy, than 
blame the tranquiUity of the right honourable gentleman. I do 
not feel myself so happily tempered, as to be lulled to repose by 
the storms that shake the land. If they invite rest to any, that 
rest ought not to be lavished on the guilty spirit. He said, he 
never more strongly felt the necessity of a perfect union with 
Britain, of standing or falling with her in fortune and constitution, 
than on this occasion. She was the parent, the archetype of 
Irish liberty, which she had preserved inviolate in its grand 
points, while among us it has been violated and debased. He 
then called upon the house to consider the trust reposed in them, 
as the great inquest of the people. He respected judges highly ; 
they ought to be respected, and feel their dignity and freedom 
from reprehension, while they did what judges ought to do ; but 
their station should not screen them, when they passed the 
limit of their duty. 

Whether they did, or not, was the question ? The house was 
the judge of those judges ; and it would betray the people to 
tyranny, and abdicate their representation, if they did not act 
with probity and firmness. 

In their proceedings against Reilly he thought they had trans- 
gressed the law, and made a precedent which, while it remained, 
was subversive of the trial by jury, and, of course, of liberty. 
He regarded the constitution, he regarded the judges, three of 

51 



52 SPEECH ON ATTACHMENTS. 

that court at least, and for their sakes he would endeavour to 
undo what they had done. 

The question was, whether that court had really punished 
their own officer for a real contempt ; or whether it had abused 
that power, for the illegal end of punishing a supposed offence 
against the state, by a summary proceeding, without a trial by 

jury '? 

He said the question was plain, whether as a point of consti- 
tution, or as of law ; as the former, it is plain and obvious ; but 
he would first consider it in the former view. When he felt the 
constitution rocking over his head, his first anxiety was to ex- 
plore the foundation, to see if the great arches that supported 
the fabrick had fallen in ; but he found them firm, on the solid 
and massy principle of common law. He then observed, that 
the principle of legal liberty was, that ofTence and trial and 
punishment should be fixed ; it was sense ; it was Magna Charta; 
a trial by jury as to fact — an appeal from judges as to law. 

He admitted attachment an exception to the general rule, as 
founded in necessity, for the support of courts, in administering 
justice, by a summary control over their officers acting under 
them. 

But the necessity that gave rise to it was also the limit. If it 
was entered farther, it would extend to all criminal cases not 
capital, and in the room of a jury, crimes would be created by a 
judge, — the party accused by him, found guilty by him, punished 
by the utter loss of his liberty and property for life, by indefinite 
fine and imprisonment, without remedy or appeal. If he did not 
answer, he was guilty ; even if he did, the court might think or 
say it thought the answer evasive, and so convict him for im- 
puted prevarication. 

The power of attachment, he said, was wisely confined by the 
British laws, and practised within that limit. The crown law- 
yers had not produced a single case, where the King's-bench in 
England had gone beyond it. They had ranged through the 
annals of history ; through every reign of folly, and of blood ; 
through the proud domination of the Tudors, and the blockhead 
despotism of the Stuarts, without finding a single case to support 
their doctrine. He considered the office of sheriff as judicial and 
ministerial. He said Rcilly's offence did not fall within any sum- 
mary control, in either capacity. It was not a judicial act ; it 



SPEECH ON ATTACHMENTS. 53 

was not cohre officii. An act colore officii must either be an act 
done by the actual exercise of an abused or usurped authority, 
neither of which could it be called ; for where the sheriff sum- 
monses his county, he does it by command, by authority, under 
pain of fine and imprisonment to those who disobey. 

Was the appointment of a meeting any such active exertion of 
authority 1 Did any man suppose he was obliged to attend ? 
That he would be fined, if he refused to attend ? No. Did the 
sheriff hold out any such colourable authority ? Clearly not. 
The contrary : — He explained the purpose of the intended meet- 
ing : he stated at whose instance he appointed such meeting, and 
thereby showed to every man in his senses, that he was not af- 
fecting to convene them by colour of any compulsive authority. 

If then there was any guilt in the sheriff's conduct, it was not 
punishable by attachment. They who argued from its enormity, 
were guilty of a shabby attempt to mislead men from the ques- 
tion, which was not, whether he ought to be punished at all ; but' 
whether he had been punished according to law ? 

You have heard no man adduce a single case to support their 
assertion ; but we have the uniform practice of the King's-bench 
in England in our favour ; the uniform practice, both there and 
here, during these last years. Had they not meetings there and 
here ? Was not the crown receiving petitions and addresses 
from such assemblies 1 — Why, during that time, no motion for an 
attachment in either kingdom ? 

If an English attorney general had attempted such a daring 
outrage on public liberty and law, he must have found some 
friend to warn him not to debase the court, and make it appear 
to all mankind as the odious engine of arbitrary power ; not to 
put it into so unnatural a situation, as that of standing between 
the people and the crown, or between the people and their re- 
presentatives. 

He would warn him not to bring public hatred on the govern- 
ment, by the adoption of illegal prosecution ; that if he showed 
himself afraid of proceeding against offenders by the ordinary 
mode, then offenders would be exalted by arbitrary persecution 
of them ; they would become suffering patriots, from being mere 
petty offenders ; their cries would become popular. He would be 
warned how he led the court into an illegality, which the com- 
mons could never endure : that no honest representative could 



54 SPEECH ON ATTACHMENTS. 

sacrifice his fame and his duty, by voting in support of a proceed- 
ing subversive of liberty ; that he would shrink from the reproach 
of the most insignificant of his constituents, if that constituent 
could say to him, ' when thou sawest the thief of the constitution, 
thou consentedst unto him.' 

Such would be the motion suggested to an English attorney 
general, and accordingly we find no instance of his ever ven- 
turing on such a measure. 

Without case then, or precedent, or principle, what is the 
support of such a conduct here 1 The distinction of a judge ? 
And what is that distinction? 'tis different in different men; 'tis 
different in the same man at different times ; — 'tis tha folly of a 
fool and the fear of a coward ; — 'tis the infamy of the young, and 
the dotage of age ; in the best man it is very weakness that hu- 
man nature is subject to, and in the worst, it is very vice. Will 
you then tell the people that you have chose this glorious 
distinction in the place of fixed laws, offences, and fixed pun- 
ishment, and in the place of that great barrier between the pre- 
rogative and the people — a trial by jury. 

But 'tis objected that the resolution is a censure on the judges, 
and a charge of corruption. — I deny it, and I appeal to your 
own acts. 

He then called to the clerk, who read from the journals a 
vote of censure passed upon Mr. Justice Robinson, for imposing 
a fine illegally in a county when on circuit, without view or 
evidence. — Was their resolution founded on any corruption of 
that judge 1 No ; you would, if so, have addressed to remove 
him. I called for the resolution, therefore, not to charge him 
with guilt ; I am persuaded he acted merely through error ; 
but to vindicate him, to vindicate you, and to exhort you to 
be consistent. You thought a much smaller violation of law was 
deserving your reprobation. — Do not abandon yourselves and 
your country to slavery, by suffering so much a grosser and more 
dangerous transgression of the constitution to become a prece- 
dent for ever. In tenderness even to the judges, interpose. 
Their regret, which I am sure they now feel on reflection, can- 
not undo what they have done ; their hands cannot wash away 
what is written in their records ; but you may repair whatever 
has been injured : if your friend had unwillingly plunged a dag- 
ger into the breast of a stranger, would you prove his innocence 



SPEECH ON ATTACHMENTS. 55 

by letting the victim bleed to death? The constitution has 
been wounded deeply, but I am persuaded innocently ; 'tis you 
only, who, by neglecting to interpose, can make the consequen- 
ces fatal, and the wound ripen into murder. 

I would wish, I own, that the liberty of Ireland should be 
supported by her own children ; but if she is scorned and reject- 
ed by them when her all is at stake, I will implore the assistance 
even of two strangers ; I will call on the right honourable se- 
cretary to support the principles of the British constitution. 
Let him not render his administration odious to the people of 
Ireland, by applying his influence in this house to the ruin of 
their personal freedom. Let him not give a pretence to the 
enemies of his friend in a sister country, to say that the son of 
the illustrious Chatham is disgracing the memory of his great fa- 
ther ; that the trophies of his Irish administration are the intro- 
duction of an inquisition among us, and extinction of a trial by 
jury ; let them not say that the pulse of the constitution beats 
only in the heart of the empire, but that it is dead in the extre- 
mities. He concluded with declaring his hearty concurrence to 
the resolution proposed. 

The attorney general, (Fitzgibbon,) in a speech of much per- 
sonality, opposed Mr. Curran's motion. 

Mr. Curran, in reply, thanked the right honourable gentleman 
for restoring him to his good humour, and for having, with great 
liberality and parliamentary decency, answered his arguments 
with personality ! Some expressions could not heat him, when com- 
ing from persons of a certain distinction. He would not interrupt 
the right honourable gentleman in the tifth repetition of his 
speech. He would prevent his arguments, by telling him, he had 
not in one instance alluded to Mr. Reilly. The right honourable 
gentleman said, he had declared the judges guilty ; but he had 
said no such thing. He said, if any judge was to act in the 
manner he mentioned, it would be an aggravation of his guilt. 
The right honourable gentleman had said, that the house of 
commons had no right to investigate the conduct of judges ; if 
so, he would ask the learned serjeant, why he sat in that chair ? 
he would ask why the resolution had been just read from the 
Journals ? — The gentleman had called him a babbler ; he could 
not think that was meant as a disgrace ; because in another par- 
liament, before he had the honour of a seat in that house, but 
2G 



56 SPEECH ON ATTACHMENTS. 

when he was in the gallery, he had heard a young lawyer named 
Babbler. He did not recollect that there were sponsors at the 
baptismal font, nor was there any occasion, as the infant had 
promised and vowed so many things in his own name. Indeed 
he found it difficult to reply, for he was not accustomed to pro- 
nounce panegyric upon himself ; he did not well know how to do 
it ; but since he could not tell them what he was, he could tell 
them what he was not. He was not a man whose respect in 
person and character depended upon the importance of his 
office ; he was not a young man who thrust himself into the 
foreground of a picture which ought to be occupied by a better 
figure ; he was not a man who repHed with invective when 
sinking under the weight of argument ; he was not a man who 
denied the necessity of a parhamentary reform at the time he 
proved the expediency of it, by reviling his own constituents, the 
parish clerk, the sexton, and grave-digger ; and if there was any 
man who could apply what he was not to himself, he left him to 
think of it in the committee, and to contemplate upon it when 
he went home. 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 



COMMERCIAL RESOLUTIONS. 



House of Commons, Saturday, July 23d, 1785. 



Mr. Curran. — I can easily excuse some inconsistences in the 
conduct of the right honourable secretary, for some accidents 
have befallen him : when we met last, he desired us to adjourn 
for three weeks ; we did so ; and now he wants above a fortnight 
more. But will that help forward the business before the house ? 
will it expedite the progress of a bill, to say, let us wait till the 
packet comes in from England, and perhaps we shall have some 
news about the propositions. Did the British minister act in this 
manner 1 no ; when he postponed from time to time the con- 
sideration of the propositions, he did not postpone the other 
business of the house : he did not say, let it wait till the packet 
comes from Dublin. This the Irish minister is forced to do : I say 
forced, for I am sure it is not his inclination ; it must distress 
him greatly ; and I sincerely feel for and pity his distress. 

When we had the eleven propositions before us, we were 
charmed with them. Why ? because we did not understand them. 
Yes, the endearing word, reciprocity, rang at every corner of the 
streets. We then thought that the right honourable gentleman 
laid the propositions before us by authority : but the English 
minister reprobates them as soon as they get to England, and the 
whole nation reprobates them : thus, on one hand, we must con- 
clude the English minister tells the Irish minister to propose an ad- 
justment ; and, when it goes back, alters every part ; or that the 
Irish minister proposed it without any authority at all. I am 
h 57 



58 SPEECH ON COMMERCIAL RESOLUTIONS. 

inclined to believe the latter; for it would add to the gentleman's 
distress to suppose the former. 

Now let us mark another inconsistency into which the right 
honourable gentleman is driven, no doubt against his will. Time 
to deliberate was refused us, when we had something to deliber- 
ate upon ; and now, when we are told we have nothing before 
us to consider, we are to have a fortnight's recess to enable us to 
think about nothing. And time indeed it will take, before we 
can think to any purpose. It will take time for the propositions 
to go through, and perhaps to be again altered in the house of 
lords. It will take time for them to be reconsidered in the Bri- 
tish commons. It will take time for them to come over here. 
It will take time for us to consider them, though that time is 
likely to be very short. It will take time to send them back to 
England. It will take time for them to be returned to us again ; 
and then time will be required to carry them into execution. 

But a rumour hath gone abroad of a studied design to delay 
the discussion of this business until there shall be no members in 
town. But away with such a suspicion ; I think too honourable 
of the right honourable gentleman : but yet I should be glad to 
hear him say, there is not even an idea of the base design of 
forcing them down our throats. 

Mr. Secretary Orde moved, that the house do adjourn to 
Tuesday se'nnight. 

Mr. Curran. — Sir, the adjournment proposed is disgraceful to 
parliament, and disgraceful to the nation. I must explain myself 
))y stating a few facts, though they relate to a subject that I 
own I cannot approach but with reluctance. The right honour- 
able gentleman early in the session produced a set of propositions 
which he was authorized to present to us as a system of final 
and permanent commercial adjustment between the two king- 
doms. As a compensation for the expected advantages of this 
system, we were called upon to impose 140,0001. a year on this 
exhausted country. Unequal to our strength, and enormous as 
the burden was, we submitted ; we were willing to strain every 
nerve in the common cause, and to stand or fall with the fate of 
the British empire. 

But what is the event 1 I feel how much beneath us it would 
be to attend to the unauthenticated rumours of what may be said 
or done in another kingdom ; but it would be a ridiculous affecta- 



SPEECH ON COMMERCIAL RESOLUTIONS. 59 

tion in us not to know tliat the right honourable gentleman's 
system has been reprobated by those under whose authority 
he was supposed to act, and that he himself has been deserted 
and disavowed. I cannot, for my own part, but pity the calam- 
ity of a man who is exposed to the contempt of the countries as 
an egregious dupe, or to their indignation as a gross impostor ; 
for even he himself now abandons every hope of those pro- 
positions returning to this house in the form they left it. On 
the contrary, he now only hopes that he may be able to 
bring something forward that may deserve our approbation 
on some future day. He requests an adjournment for ten days, 
and he promises that he will give a week's notice, when the yet 
undiscovered something is to be proposed, which something 
he promises shall be agreeable to this nation, and authorised by 
the English minister. On what his confidence of this is found- 
ed I know not, unless he argues, that because he has been dis- 
avowed and exposed in his past conduct by his employers, he may 
rely on their supporting him in future. 

But however the right honourable gentleman may fail in draw- 
ing instruction from experience or calamity, we ought to be more 
wise ; we should learn caution from disappointment. We relied 
on the right honourable gentleman's assurances — we found them 
fallacious : we have oppressed the people with a load of taxes, 
as a compensation for a commercial adjustment ; we have not got 
that adjustment: we confided in our skill in negociation, and we 
are rendered ridiculous by that confidence. We looked abroad 
for the resources of Irish commerce, and we find that they are 
to be sought for only at home, in the industry of the people, in 
the honesty of parliament, and in our learning that negociation 
must inevitably bring derision on ourselves, and ruin on our con- 
stituents. But you are called on to depend on the right honour- 
able gentleman's regard for his own reputation : when the inter- 
est of the people is at stake, can we be honest in reposing on 
so despicable a security ? Suppose this great pledge of the right 
honourable gentleman's character should chance to become for- 
feited, where will you look for it ? When he sails for England, 
is it too large to carry with him 1 Or, if you would discover in 
what parish of Great Britain it may be found, will the sacrifice 
be an atonement to the people, who have already been betrayed 
by trusting to so contemptible a pledge ? See then what we do 



60 SPEECH ON COMMERCIAL RESOLUTIONS. 

by consenting to this short adjournment : we have been obscured 
already, and we neglect every other duty, in order to solicit a 
repetition of that abuse. If this something should arrive at all, 
it will be proposed when the business of the country will engage 
every county member at the assizes : for as to his week's notice, 
it either cannot reach him in time, or, if it should, he cannot pos- 
sibly obey it. Is it then our wish to have a new subject of such 
moment, as a contract that is to bind us for ever, concluded in 
half a house, and without a single representative for a county in 
the number 1 Is it wise to trust to half the house in a negocia- 
tion in which the wisdom of the whole has been already defeat- 
ed ? ' But what is the necessity that induces us to acquiesce in a 
measure of so much danger and disgrace ? Is this nation brought 
to so abject a condition by her representatives, as to have no re- 
fuge from ruin but in the immediate assistance of Great Britain ? 
Sir, I do not so far despair of the public weal : oppressed as we 
were, we found a resource for our constitution in the spirit of 
the people ; abused as we now find ourselves, our commerce can- 
not fail of a resource in our virtue and industry, if we do not 
suffer ourselves to be diverted from those great and infallible 
resources, by a silly hope from negociation, for which we are not 
adapted, and in which we can never succeed. And if this great 
hope still is left, why fill the public mind with alarm and dismay ? 
Shall we teach the people to think, that something instantly 
must be done, to save them from destruction? Suppose that 
something should not, cannot be done, may not the attempt, in- 
stead of uniting the two countries, involve them in the conse- 
quences of discord and dissension? But, if your comphance with 
the right honourable gentleman's requisition does not sink the 
people into despair of their own situation, does it not expose the 
honour and integrity of this house to suspicion and distrust ? For 
what can they suppose we intend by this delay ? The right 
honourable gentleman may find it worth his while to secure the 
continuance in his oflice by an expedient, however temporary 
and ineffectual ? but, sir, if we are supposed to concur in such 
a design, our character is gone with the people ; for, if we are 
honest, it can be of no moment to us whether this secretary or 
that minister shall continue in office or not. I know it has been 
rumored that the right honourable gentleman may take advan- 
tage of a thin house, to impose upon this country the new set of 



SPEECH ON COMMERCIAL RESOLUTIONS. 61 

resolutions that have passed the commons of Great Britain. Sir, 
1 do not suspect any such thing, nor would I encourage such a 
groundless apprehension. Sir, I do not think it would be easy 
to find a man who would stand within the low- water mark of our 
shore, and read some of those resolutions above his breath, with- 
out feehng some uneasiness for his personal safety ; neither can I 
think, if a foreign usurpation should come crested to our bar, 
and demand from the treachery of this house a surrender of that 
constitution which has been established by the virtue of the na- 
tion, that we would answer such a requisition by words. 

But, sir, though the people should not apprehend such extreme 
perfidy from us, they will be justly alarmed if they see us acting 
with needless precipitation ; after what is past, we cannot be sur- 
prised at not meeting with the most favourable interpretations 
of our conduct. 

On great subjects, the magnitude of the ideas to be compared, 
may cause some confusion in the minds of ordinary men ; they will, 
therefore, examine our conduct by analogy to the more frequent 
occurrences of common life : such cases happen every day. Will 
you permit me to suppose a very familiar one, by which our 
present situation may be illustrated to a common mind. 

I will suppose then, sir, that an old friend that you loved, just 
recovering from a disease in which he had been wasted almost 
to death, should prevail upon you to take the trouble of buying him 
a horse for the establishment of his health; and I the more freely 
presume to represent you for a moment in an office so little cor- 
responding with the dignity of your station, from a consciousness 
that my fancy cannot put you in any place to which you will not 
be followed by my utmost respect. I will therefore, suppose that 
you send for a horse-jockey, who does not come himself, but sends 
his foreman : 

Says the foreman, sir, 1 know what you want ; my master 
has a horse that will exactly match your friend; he has descend- 
ed from Rabelais' famous Johannes Caballus, that got a doctor 
of physic's degree from the college of Rheims ; but your friend 
must pay his price. My master knows he has no money at pres- 
ent, and will therefore accept his note for the amount of what 
he shall be able to earn while he lives, allowing him, however, 
such moderate subsistence as may prevent him from perishing. 
If you are satisfied I will step for the horse and bring him in- 



62 SPEECH ON COMMERCIAL RESOLUTIONS. 

stantly, with the bridle and saddle, which you shall have into the 
bargain. But, friend, say you, are you sure that you are au- 
thorized to make this bargain ? What, sir, cries the foreman, 
would you doubt my honour ? Sir, I can find three hundred gen- 
tlemen who never saw me before, and yet have gone bail for me 
at the first view of my face. Besides, sir, you have a greater 
pledge ; my honour, sir, my renown is at stake. Well, sir, you 
agree, the note is passed ; the foreman leaves you, and returns 
without the horse. What, sir ! where is the horse ? Why, in 
truth, sir, answers he, I am sorry for this little disappointment, 
but my mistress has taken a fancy to the horse ; so your friend 
cannot have him. But we have a nice little mare that will match 
him better ; as to the saddle he must do without that, for Httle 
master insists on keeping it ; however, your friend has been so 
poor a fellow that he must have too thick a skin to be much fret- 
ted by riding bare-backed ; besides, the mare is so low that his 
feet will reach the ground when he rides her ; and still further 
to accommodate him, my master insists on having a chain locked 
to her feet, of which lock my master is to have a key to lock or 
unlock as he pleases, and your friend shall also have a key so 
formed that he cannot unlock the chain, but with which he may 
double lock it if he thinks fit. 

What, sirrah, do you think I'll betray my old friend to such a 
fraud ? Why really, sir, you are impertinent, and your friend is 
too peevish ; 'twas only the other day that he charged my mas- 
ter with having stolen his cloak, and grew angry, and got a fer- 
rule and spike to his staff. Why, sir, you see how good-humour- 
edly my master gave back the cloak. Sir, my master scorns to 
break his word, and so do 1 ; sir, my character is your security. 
Now, as to the mare, you are too hasty in objecting to her, for I 
am not sure that you can get her ; all I ask of you now is to 
wait a few hours in the street, that I may try if something may 
not be done ; but let me say one word to you in confidence : 

I am to get two guineas if I can bring your friend to be satis- 
fied vi^ith what we can do for him ; now if you assist me in this, 
you shall have half the money ; for to tell you the truth, if 1 
fail in my undertaking I shall either be discharged entirely, or 
degraded to my former place of helper in the stable. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, as I do not presume to judge of your feel- 
ings by my own, I cannot be sure that you would beat the fore- 



SPEECH ON COMMERCIAL RESOLUTIONS. 63 

man, or abuse him as an impudent lying impostor : I rather think 
you would for a moment be lost in reflecting, and not without a 
pang, how the rectitude of your heart, and the tenderness of 
your head, had exposed you to be the dupe of improbity and 
folly. But, sir, I know you would leave the wretch who had 
deceived you, or the fool who was deceived by his master, and 
you would return to your friend. And methinks you would say 
to him, we have been deceived in the course we have adopted ; 
for, my good friend, you must look to the exertions of your own 
strength for the establishment of your health. You have great 
stamina still remaining, rely upon them, and they will support 
you. Let no man persuade you to take the ferrule or spike 
from your staflf! It will guard your cloak. Neither quarrel with 
the jockey, for he cannot recover the contents of the note, as 
you have not the horse ; and he may yet see the policy of using 
you honestly, and deserving to be your friend. If so, embrace 
him, and let your staff be lifted in defence of your common 
safety, and until that shall happen, let it be always in readiness 
to defend yourself. 

Such, sir, is the advice you would ofier to your friend, and 
which I would now oifer to this house. There is no ground for 
despairing ; let us not therefore alarm the people. If a closer 
connexion with Great Britain is not now practicable, it may be- 
come practicable hereafter. But we shall ruin every hope of 
that kind by precipitation. I do therefore conjure gentlemen 
not to run the risk of forcing us on a week's notice to enter on a 
subject, on which every man in the nation ought to be allowed 
the most unlimited time for deliberation. I do conjure them not 
to assent to a measure that can serve nobody but the proposer 
of it; that must expose this house to the distrust of their 
constituents, and which may in its consequences endanger the 
harmony of two kingdoms, whose interests and fortunes ought 
never to be separated. 

2H 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 



BILL FOR REGULATING THE COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE 
BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 

House of Commons, Friday, August 12tli, 1785. 



Mr. Orde moved for leave to bring in the bill. 

Mr. CuRRAN said, he was too nnuch exhausted to say much at 
that hour (six o'clock) on the subject. His zeal had survived 
his strength. He wished his present state of mind and body- 
might not be ominous of the condition to which Ireland would be 
reduced, if this bill should become a law. He could not there- 
fore yield even to his weakness. It was a subject which might 
animate the dead. He then took a view of the progress of the 
arrangement, and arraigned the insidious conduct of the ad- 
ministration. In Ireland it was proposed by the minister ; in Eng- 
land it was reprobated by the same minister. He had known 
children to learn to play cards, by playing the right hand against 
the left: he had never before heard of negociation being learned 
in that way. He said a bill was not a mode of negociating ; our 
law spoke only to ourselves — bound only ourselves; — it was ab- 
surd therefore to let a bill proceed. But the commercial part 
was out of the question ; for this bill portended a surrender of 
the constitution and liberty of Ireland. If, said he, we should 
attempt so base an act, it would be void, as to the people. We 
may abdicate our representation, but the right remains with the 
people, and can be surrendered only by them. We may ratify 
our own infamy ; we cannot ratify their slavery. He feared the 
British minister was mistaken in the temper of Ireland, and 
judged of it by former times. Formerly the business here was 

64 



SPEECH ON COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE. 65 

Carried on by purchased majorities ; there was a time when the 
most infamous measure was sure of being supported by as infa- 
mous a majority. But things were changed ; the people were 
enhghtened and strong ; they would not bear a surrender of their 
rights, which he said would be the consequence if they submitted 
to this bill. It contained a covenant to enact such laws as Eng- 
land should think proper, they would annihilate the parliament 
of Ireland. The people here must go to the bar of the English 
house of commons for relief; and for a circuitous trade to England, 
we were accepting, he said, a circuitous constitution. 

He said it was different totally from the cases to which it had 
been compared, the settlement of 1779, or the Methuen treaty; 
there all was specific and defined ; here all was fustian and un- 
certain. A power to bind externally would involve a power also 
of binding internally. This law gave the power to Great Britain 
of judging what would be a breach of the compact, of construing 
it, in fact of taxing us as she pleased, and gave her new strength 
to enforce our obedience. In such an event, he said, we must 
either sink into utter slavery, or the people must either wade to 
a re-assumption of their rights through civil blood, or be obliged 
to take refuge in an union, which, he said, would be the anni- 
hilation of Ireland, aud what he suspected the minister was 
driving at. Even the Irish minister, he said, no longer pretended 
to use his former language on this subject ; formerly we were 
lost in a foolish admiration at the long impedimented mark of ora- 
toric pomp with which the secretary displayed the magnanimity 
of Great Britain. That kind of eloquence, he supposed, was 
formed upon some model; but he suspected that the light of poli- 
tical wisdom was more easily repeated than the heat of eloquence ; 
yet we were in raptures even with the oratory of the honourable 
gentleman. However he now had descended to an humble style. 
He talked no more of reciprocity, no more of emporium. He 
then went into general observations to show that this treaty 
would give no solid advantages to Ireland, but was a revocation 
of the grant of 1779. He said he loved the liberty of Ireland ; he 
would therefore vote against the bill, as subversive of that liber- 
ty ; he would also vote against it as leading to a schism between 
the two nations, that must terminate in a civil war, or an union 
at best. He was sorry, he said, that he troubled them so long ; 
but he feared it might be the last time he should ever have an 
i 



66 SPEECH ON THE BILL FOR 

opportunity of addressing a free parliament ; and if, said he, the 
period is approaching when the boasted constitution of Ireland 
be no more, I own I feel a melancholy ambition in deserving that 
my name may be enrolled with those who endeavored to save it 
in its last moment. Posterity would be grateful for the last ef- 
fort, though it should have failed of success. 



House of Commons, Monday, August 15th, 1785. 

The Right Hon. Thomas Orde having intimated that he 
would not press the further consideration of the commercial regu- 
lation bill during the sessions, which was in fact giving up the 
bill, and Mr. Flood having moved the following resolution : 

" Resolved, That we hold ourselves bound not to enter into any 
engagement to give up the sole and exclusive right of the parlia- 
ment of Ireland to legislate for Ireland in all cases whatsoever, 
as well externally as commercially and internally." 

Mr. Curran expressed the effusion of his joy upon the victory 
this country had obtained. He said he would support the reso- 
lution proposed by the honourable member, because he thought 
it necessary to declare to the people, that their rights had not 
been solely supported by 110 independent gentlemen, but that 
if eight or ten of them had been absent, that those who had 
countenanced the measure would have abandoned every idea 
of prosecuting it further. It had ever been the custom of our 
ancestors, when the constitution had been attacked, to enter into 
some spirited step for its support. Why was Magna Charta 
passed ? It was passed, not to give freedom to the people, but 
because the people were already free. Why was the repeal of 
the 6th of Geo. I. ? Not to give independence to the men of 
Ireland, but because Ireland was in itself an independent nation. 
This resolution did not go to give rights, but to declare that we 
will preserve our rights. We were told to be cautious how we 
commit ourselves with the parliament of Great Britain: whether 
this treat carried with it more of prudence or timidity, he should 
leave gentlemen to determine. He rejoiced that the cloud 
which had lowered over them had passed away, and he declared 
he had no intention to wound the feelings of the minister, by 
triumphing in his defeat : on the contrary, he might be said to 



REGULATING COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE. G7 

rise with some degree of self-denial, when he gave to others an 
opportunity of exulting in the victory. The opposition in En- 
gland had thrown many impediments in the way, but he would 
remember with gratitude, that the opposition there, had sup- 
ported the liberties of Ireland. When he saw them reprobating 
the attacks made upon the trial by jury ; when he saw them 
supporting the legislative rights of Ireland, he could not refrain 
from giving them his applause. They well knew that an inva- 
sion of the liberty of Ireland would tend to an attack upon their 
own. The principle of liberty, thank Heaven, still continued in 
those countries : — that principle which had stained the fields of 
Marathon, stood in the pass to Thermopylae, and gave to America 
independence. Happy it was for Ireland, that she had reco- 
vered her rights by victory, not stained by blood — not a victory 
bathed in the tears of a mother, a sister, or a wife — not a vic- 
tory hanging over the grave of a Warren or a Montgomery, and 
uncertain whether to triumph in what she had gained, or to 
mourn ovei* what she had lost ! 

He said, as to the majority who had voted for bringing in the 
bill, the only way they could justify themselves to their constitu- 
ents was by voting for the resolution. As to the minority who 
had saved the country, they needed no vindication ; but those 
who voted for the introduction of the bill must have waited for 
the committee, to show the nation that they would never assent 
to the fourth proposition. That opportunity, he said, could 
never arrive. — The bill was at an end. The cloud that had 
been collecting so long, and threatening to break in tempest and 
ruin on our heads, had passed harmless away. The siege that 
was drawn round the constitution was raised, and the enemy 
was gone. Juvat ire, el Dorica castra, and they might now go 
abroad without fear, and trace the dangers they had escaped ; 
here was drawn the line of circumvallation, that cut them off 
for ever from the Eastern world : and there the corresponding 
one, that inclosed them from the West. Nor let us, said he, 
forget in our exultation to whom we are indebted for the deli- 
verance. — Here stood the trusty mariner [Mr. Conolly] on his 
old station the mast head, and gave the signal. Here [Mr. Flood] 
all the wisdom of the state was collected, exploring your weak- 
ness and your strength, detecting every ambuscade, and pointing 
to the hidden battery, that was brought to bear on the shrine of 



08 SPEECH ON COMMERCIAL INTERCOURSE, &c. 

freedom. And there [Mr. Grattan] was exerting an eloquence 
more than human, inspiring, forming, directing, animating, to 
the great purposes of your salvation, &c. But I feel, said he, 
that I am leaving the question, and the bounds of moderation ; 
but there is an ebullition in great excesses of joy that almost 
borders on insanity. I own I feel something like it in the pro- 
fuseness with which I share in the general triumph. It was not, 
however, a triumph which he wished to enjoy at the expense of 
the honourable gentleman ; who had brought in the bill, he was 
willing to believe, with the best intention. Whatever he might 
have thought before, he now felt no trace of resentment to the 
honourable gentleman. On the contrary, he wished that that 
day's intercourse, which would probably be their last, might be 
marked on his part with kindness and respect. 

He was for letting the right honourable gentleman easily 
down ; he was not for depressing him with the triumph, but he 
was for calling him to share in the exultation. Upon what 
principle could the gentlemen who supported the previous ques- 
tion defend their conduct, unless it was in contradiction to the 
general rule of adhering to measures, not to the man ? Here it 
was plain they were adhering to the man, not to the measure ; 
the measure had sunk, but the man was still afloat. Perhaps 
they thought it decent to pay a funeral compliment to his de- 
parture ; yet he warned them how they pressed too eagerly for- 
ward, for as there could not be many bearers, some of them might 
be disappointed of the scarf or the cypress. He besought them 
now to let all end in good humour, and, like sailors, who had 
pursued different objects, when they got into port, shake hands 
with harmony. 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

ON PENSIONS. 

House of Commons, March 13th, 1786. 



Mr. Forbes presented a bill to limit the amount of pensions, 
which was received and read the first time. 

Mr. Mason moved, " that the second reading of the bill be post- 
poned till the first of August." 

Sir Boyle Roche opposed the bill, and said, " he would not stop 
the fountain of Royal favour, but let it flow freely, spontaneously, 
and abundantly, as Holywell in Wales, that turns so many mills." 

Mr. CuRRAN. — I object to adjourning this bill to the first of 
August, because I perceive in the present disposition of the house, 
that a proper decision will be made upon it this night. We have 
set out upon our inquiry in a manner so honourable, and so con- 
sistent, that we have reason to expect the happiest success, 
which I would not wish to see baffled by delay. 

We began with giving the full affirmative of this house, that 
no grievance exists at all ; we considered a simple matter of 
fact, and adjourned our opinion, or rather we gave sentence 
on the conclusion, after having adjourned the premises. But I 
do begin to see a great deal of argument in what the learned 
baronet has said, and I beg gentlemen will acquit me of apostacy 
if I offer some reasons why the bill should not be admitted to 
a second reading. 

I am surprised that gentlemen have taken up such a foolish 
opinion, as that our constitution is maintained by its different 
component parts, mutually checking and controlling each other : 
they seem to think with Hobbes, that a state of nature is a state 
of warfare, and that, like Mahomet's coffin, the constitution is 
suspended between the attraction of different powers. My friends 



70 SPEECH ON PENSIONS. 

seem to think that the crown should be restrained from doing 
wrong by a physical necessity, forgetting that if you take away 
from man all power to do wrong, you at the same time take 
away from him all merit of doing right, and by making it impos- 
sible for men to run into slavery, you enslave them most effectu- 
ally. But if instead of the three different parts of our constitu- 
tion drawing forcibly in right lines, at opposite directions, they 
were to unite their power, and draw all one way, in one right 
line, how great would be the effect of their force, how happy the 
direction of this union. The present system is not only contrary 
to mathematical rectitude, but to public harmony ; but if instead 
of privilege setting up his back to oppose prerogative, he was to 
saddle his back and invite prerogative to ride, how comfort- 
ably might they both jog along; and therefore it delights me 
to hear the advocates for the royal bounty flowing freely and 
spontaneously and abundantly as Holywell in Wales. If the 
crown grants double the amount of the revenue in pensions, 
they approve of their royal master, for he is the breath of their 
nostrils. 

But we will find that this complaisance, this gentleness between 
the crown and its true servants, is not confined at home; it extends 
its influence to foreign powers. Our merchants have been insult- 
ed in Portugal, our commerce interdicted ; what did the British 
lion do ? Did he whet his tusks 1 Did he bristle up and shake 
his mane 1 Did he roar 1 No ; no such thing — the gentle crea- 
ture wagged his tail for six years at the court of Lisbon : and now 
we hear from the Delphic oracle on the treasury bench, that he 
is wagging his tail in London to chevalier Pinto, who he hopes 
soon to be able to tell us will allow his lady to entertain him as 
a lap dog ; and when she does, no doubt the British factory will 
furnish some of their softest woollens to make a cushion for him 
to lie upon. But though the gentle beast has continued fawning 
and couching, I believe his vengeance will be great as it is slow, 
and that posterity, whose ancestors are yet unborn, will be sur- 
prised at the vengeance he will take. 

This polyglot of wealth, this museum of curiosities, the pension 
list, embraces every link in the human chain, every description 
of men, women and children, from the exalted excellence of a 
Hawke or a Rodney, to the debased situation of the lady who 
humblcth herself that she may be exalted. But the lessons it 



SPEECH ON PENSIONS. 71 

inculcates form its greatest perfection : — it teacheth that sloth 
and vice may eat that bread which virtue and honesty may 
starve for after they had earned it. It teaches the idle and dis- 
solute to look up for that support which they are too proud to 
stoop and earn. It directs the minds of men to an entire reliance 
on the ruling power of the state, who feeds the ravens of the royal 
aviary, that cry continually for food. It teaches them to imi- 
tate those saints on the pension list that are like lilies of the field 
— they toil not, neither do they spin, but they are arrayed like 
Solomon in his glory. In fine, it teaches a lesson which indeed 
they might have learned from Epictetus — that it is sometimes 
good not to be over virtuous ; it shows, that in proportion as our 
distresses increase, the munificence of the crown increases also — 
in proportion as our clothes are rent, the royal mantle is extend- 
ed over us. 

But notwithstanding the pension list, like charity, covers a 
multitude of sins, give me leave to consider it as coming home to 
the members of this house — give me leave to say, that the crown 
in extending its charity, its liberality, its profusion, is laying a 
foundation for the independence of parliament ; for hereafter, in- 
stead of orators or patriots accounting for their conduct to such 
mean and unworthy persons as free-holders, they will learn to 
despise them, and look to the first man in the state ; and they will 
by so doing have this security for their independence, that while 
any man in the kingdom has a shilling, they will not want one. 

Suppose at any future period of time the boroughs of Ireland 
should decline from their present flourishing and prosperous state 
— suppose they should fall into the hands of men who would wish 
to drive a profitable commerce, by having members of parliament 
to hire or let ; in such a case a secretary would find great diffi- 
culty if the proprietors of members should enter into a combination 
to form a monopoly; to prevent which in time, the wisest way is 
to purchase up the raw material, young members of parliament, 
just rough from the grass ; and when they are a little bitted, and 
he has got a pretty stud, perhaps of seventy, he may laugh at 
the slave merchant : some of them he may teach to sound through 
the nose, like a barrel organ ; some, in the course of a few months 
might be taught to cry hear ! hear ! some, chair ! chair ! upon 
occasion ; though these latter might create a little confusion, if 
they were to forget whether they called inside or outside of 
21 



72 SPEECH ON PENSIONS. 

those doors. Again, he might have some so trained that he need 
only pull a string, and up gets a repeating member ; and if they 
were so dull that they could neither speak nor make orations, 
(for they are different things) he might have them taught to 
dance, pedibus ire in se?iie7itia. — This improvement might be ex- 
tended ; he might have them dressed in coats and shirts all of 
one colour, and of a Sunday he might march them to church two 
by two, to the great edification of the people and the honour of 
the christian religion; afterwards, like the ancient Spartans, or 
the fraternity at Kilmainham, they might dine all together in a 
large hall. Good heaven ! what a sight to see them feeding in 
public upon public viands, and talking of public subjects for the 
benefit of the public. It is a pity they are not immortal ; but I 
hope they will flourish as a corporation, and that pensioners will 
beget pensioners to the end of the chapter. 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

ON PENSIONS. 

House of Commons, Monday, March 12th, 1787. 



Mr. Forbes presented a bill to limit pensions ; it was read a 
first time : he then moved, that it be read a second time on the 
following day ; this was opposed by the Chancellor of the Exche- 
quer, who moved, that the bill should be read a second time on 
the first of August. 

Mr. Curran said, he felt too much respect for the excellent 
mover of the bill, and too strong a sense of the necessity of the 
measure, to give it only a silent support. He rejoiced, he said, 
in the virtuous perseverance of his honourable friend in labour- 
ing for the establishment of our constitution, by securing the in- 
dependence of parliament. He would offer some reasons in de- 
fence of the bill, though he felt the full force of the policy adopt- 
ed by administration, to make any attempt of that kind either 
ridiculous or impossible. He observed the gentlemen, he said, 
consulting whether to bury the question under a mute majority, 
or whether to make a sham opposition to it by setting up the old 
gladiator of administration, new polished and painted for the field. 
They expected, he supposed, that men should shrink in silence 
and disgust from such a competition. He would, he said, defend 
the principle of the bill on the grounds of economy, but still more 
of constitution. He adverted to the frame of our civil state, it 
depended on an exact balance of its parts, but he said, from our 
peculiar situation, that equipoise on which our liberty depends 
must be continually losing ground, and the power of the crown 
continually increasing. A single individual can be vigilant and 
active, improving every occasion of extending his power ; the 
k 73 



74 SPEECH ON PENSIONS. 

people arc not so, they are divided in sentiment, in interest with- 
out union, and therefore without co-operation, and from the ne- 
cessity of bringing the constitution frequently back to its first 
principles ; but this, he said, was doubly necessary to do by law, 
in a country where a long system of dividing the people had al- 
most extinguished that public mind, that public vigilance and 
jealousy, with which the conduct of the crown was watched over 
in Great Britain. But further, he said, it was rendered necessary 
by the residence of our king in another country. — His authority 
must be delegated first to a viceroy, and next it fell to a secre- 
tary, who could have no interest in the good of the people ; no 
interest in future fame, no object to attract him but the advance- 
ment of his dependants. Then, he said, the responsibility that 
binds an English king to moderation and frugality was lost here 
in the confusion of persons, or in their insignificance. This, he 
said, might be deemed an unusual language in that house, but 
assured the right honourable secretary, he did not speak with 
any view of disturbing his personal feelings ; he did not admire, 
nor would he imitate the cruelty of the Sicilian tyrant who amus- 
ed himself with putting insects to the torture ; he was therefore 
stating facts. What responsibility, said he, can be found or hoped 
for in an English secretary? Estimate them fairly, not according 
to the adulation that lifts them into a ridiculous importance while 
they are among you, or the as unmerited contumely that is heaped 
upon them by disappointment and shame when they leave you. 
But what have they been in foct ? — why, a succession of men, 
sometimes with heads, sometimes with hearts, oftener with 
neither. 

But as to the present right honourable secretary, he said, it 
was peculiarly ridiculous to talk of his responsibility or his eco- 
nomy, to the people : his economy was only to be found in re- 
ducing the scanty pittance which profusion had left for the en- 
couragement of our manufactures ; or in withholding from the 
undertakers of a great national object, that encouragement that 
had been offered them on the express faith of parliament; un- 
less, perhaps, it were to be looked for in the pious plan of selling 
the materials of houses of religious worship on a principle of 
economy. But where will you look, said he, for his responsibility 
as a minister? Fou will remember his commercial propositions. 
They were proposed to this country on his responsibility. You 



SPEECH ON PENSIONS. 75 

cannot forget the exhibition he made; you cannot have yet lost 
his madrigal on reciprocity : but what was the event ? He went 
to Great Britain with ten propositions, and he returned with dou- 
ble the number, disclaimed and abandoned by those to whom he 
belonged, and shorn of every pretension to responsibility. But 
look for it in the next leading featiire of his administration. 

We gave an addition of 140,000/. in taxes, on the express 
compact and condition of confining expense within the limits 
of revenue. Already has that compact been shamefully evaded: 
but what says the responsible gentleman ? Why he stood up in 
his place, and had the honest confidence boldly to deny the fact. 
Now, said he, I should be glad to ask who that right honourable 
gentleman is 1 Is he the whole house of commons 1 If he be, 
he proposed the compact. Is he the king? he accepted it by 
his viceroy. Is he the viceroy ? he accepted by himself. In 
every character that could give such a compact either credit, or 
dignity, or stability, he has either proposed or ratified it ; in 
what character then does the right honourable gentleman deny 
it ? why, in his own ; in that of a right honourable gentleman. 
Can any man then, said he, be so silly as to think that so bare- 
faced a spirit of profusion can be stopped by any thing less than a 
law 1 — Or can any man point out any ground on which we can 
confide in the right honourable gentleman's affection to the in- 
terest or even the peace of this country ? At a time when we 
are told that the people are in a state of tumult little short of 
rebellion, when you ought to wish to send an angel to recall the 
people to their duty, and restore the credit of the laws, what does 
he do ? — he keeps three judicial places, absolute, vacant, or 
sinecure places, as if in this country not ofticers, but offices are 
to become superannuated ; and he sends the commission with a 
job tacked to it, to be displayed in the very scene of this sup- 
posed confusion. — Would this contemptuous trifling with the 
public be borne in Great Britain ? No, sir ; but what the sub- 
stance of an English minister, with all his talents, would not 
dare to attempt in that country, his fetch is able to achieve, 
and with impunity, in this. 

But a right honourable member opposes the principle of the 
bill, as being in restraint of the royal bounty. I agree with him 
in this sentiment, but I differ from this argument. It becomes 
the dignity and humanity of a generous people to leave it in the 



76 SPEECH ON PENSIONS. 

power of the sovereign to employ some part of the public wealth 
for honourable purposes, for rewarding merit, for encouraging 
science. — Nor would it become us to inquire too narrowly into 
every casual or minute misapplication : but a gross and general 
application of the people's money to the encouragement of 
every human vice, is a crying grievance that calls on every 
man to check it ; not by restraining the bounty of the crown, 
but curbing the profusion of Irish administrations. 

The pension list, at the best of times, was a scandal to this 
country ; but the present abuses of it, he said, went beyond all 
bounds, and almost justified what he would formerly have con- 
sidered as shameful. If a great ofiicer of state, for instance, finds 
that the severity of business requires the consolation of the tender 
passion, he courts through the pension list ; and the lady, very 
wisely, takes hold of the occasion, which, perhaps, could not be 
taken of the lover, and seizes time by the forelock. Why, sir, 
we may pass over a little treaty of that sort ; it may naturally 
enough fall under the articles of concordatum or contingences ; 
but that unhappy list has been degraded by a new species of 
prostitution that was unknown before : the granting of honours 
and titles, to lay the foundation for the grant of a pension. The 
suffering any man to steal a dignity, for the purpose that a barren 
beggar steals a child. It was reducing the honours of the state 
from badges of dignity to badges of mendicancy. 

He then adverted to the modern practice of doubling the pen- 
sions of members of that house, who were unhappily pensioners 
already. Was the secretary, he said, afraid of their becoming 
converts ? Was it necessary to double-bolt them with pensions 1 
Was there really so much danger that little fricksay would re- 
pent and go into a nunnery, that the kind keeper must come 
down another hundred, to save her from becoming honest ? 

But a right honourable gentleman, he said, had made another 
objection rather inconsistent with his former : — he feared it would 
take away the control of parliament on pensions within the lim- 
its of the act proposed. The objection was not, therefore, found- 
ed in fact, at the same time that the argument admitted that the 
unlimited power of pensioning was a grievance that ought to be 
remedied by some effectual control ; such, he said, was the prin-^ 
ciple and the effect of this bill, if carried into a law. It would 
not restrain the crown; it would not restrain a lord lieutenant ; 



SPEECH ON PENSIONS. 77 

it would only restrain a secretary from that shameful profusion 
of the public treasure, unimputable and unknown to his majes- 
ty or his viceroy, which was equally disgraceful to the giver and 
receiver. — It was a bill to preserve the independence of parlia- 
ment ; it was a bill to give us the constitution of Great Britain 
when we had it not before. It was a bill peculiarly necessary 
when we had adopted a penal law of Great Britain, giving a new 
force to the executive magistrate, that we should also adopt that 
law of Great Britain, which might secure the rights of the people : 
it was a law necessary as a counterpoise to the riot-act : it was a 
law of invention, and, if necessary, prevention ; for if, said he, you 
wait till the evil, which my right honourable friend is anxious to 
guard against, shall have actually fallen upon this country, the 
corruption will be universal, and the remedy impossible. 



SPEECH OF MR- CURRAN, 

ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 

House of Commons, October 17th, 1796. 



Mr. Grattan moved the following resolution : " That the 
admissibility of persons professing the Roman Catholic religion, to 
seats in parliament, is consistent with the safety of the crown, 
and the connexion of Ireland with Great Britain. 

Seconded by Mr. G. Ponsonby. 

Mr. G. Ogle voted for the order of the day. 

Mr. Curran began, by declaring, that he had no words to ex- 
press the indignation he felt at the despicable attempt to skulk 
from the discussion of so important and so necessary a question, 
by the affectation of an appeal to our secrecy and our discre- 
tion; the ludicrous, the ridiculous secrecy of a public assembly; 
the nonsense of pretending to conceal from the world what they 
know as well, or better, than ourselves ; the rare discretion of an 
Irish parliament hiding from the executive directory of the 
French republic the operations of their own armies : concealing 
from them their victories in Italy, or their humiliation of Great 
Britain ; concealing from them the various coquetry of her ne- 
gociations, and her now avowed solicitations of a peace. As 
ridiculous and as empty was the senseless parade of affecting to 
keep our own deliberations a secret. Rely upon it, sir, said he, 
if our enemies condescend to feel any curiosity as to our discus- 
sion, you might as well propose to conceal from them the course 
of the Danube, or the course of the Rhine, as the course of a 
debate in this assembly, as winding, perhaps, and perhaps as 
muddy as either. But the folly of the present advocates for 
silence and for secrecy went still farther: — it proposed to 

78 



SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 79 

keep all these matters a profound secret from ourselves; it went 
to the extravagant length of saying, that if we were beaten, we 
were not to deliberate upon the means of repairing our disasters ; 
that would be to own that we were beaten ; that if the enemy- 
was at our gates, it would not be prudent to acknowledge so ter- 
rifying a fact, even in considering the means of repelling him ; 
that if our people were disaffected, we ought to be peculiarly 
cautious of any measures that could possibly tend to conciliation 
and union, because the adoption, or even the discussion of such 
measures, would be, in effect, to tell ourselves, and to tell all the 
world, that the people were disaffected. He said, that the infatua- 
tion or the presumption of ministers went even farther than this : — 
that it insisted upon the denial and the avowal of the very same 
facts; that we were to be alarmed with an invasion, for the purpose 
of making us obsequious to all the plans of ministers for intrench- 
ing themselves in their places ; that we were to be panic struck 
for them, but disdainful for ourselves ; that our people were to 
be disaffected, and the consequences of that disaffection to be the 
most dangerous and the most imminent, for the purpose of de- 
spoiling ourselves of our best and most sacred privileges. So im- 
minent was this danger, that it was declared by ministers and by 
their adherents, that, in order to preserve our liberties for ever, it 
was absolutely necessary to surrender them for a time; the surren- 
der had been actually made. So frightfully disunited and divided 
were we, that we could not venture to trust ourselves with the 
possession of our freedom ; but we were all united as one man 
against redressing the grievances of the great majority of our- 
selves ; we were all united as one man against the conciliation 
of our animosities, and the consolidation of our strength. He 
declared, that, for one, he would never submit to be made the 
credulous dupe of an imposture so gross and so impudent: he knew 
that the times were critical indeed ; he knew that it was neces- 
sary to open our eyes to our danger, and to meet it in the front : 
to consider what that danger was, and to consider of the best, 
and perhaps the only, possible means of averting it. For these 
reasons he considered the resolution not only a measure of jus- 
tice and of honesty, but of the most pressing necessity. 

He knew, he said, that a trivial subject of the day would na- 
turally engage them more deeply, than any more distant object 
of however greater importance ; but he begged they would recol- 
2K 



80 SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 

lect that the petty interest of party must expire with themselves, 
and that their heirs must be, not statesmen, nor placemen, nor 
pensioners, but the future people of the country at large. He 
knew of no so awful a call upon the justice and wisdom of an as 
sembly, as the reflection that they were deliberating on the in- 
terests of posterity. 

The first step of ministers was to create a division among the 
Catholics themselves ; the next was to hold them up as a body for- 
midable to the English government, and to their protestant fel- 
low subjects ; but he conjured the house to be upon their guard 
against those despicable attempts to traduce their people, to 
alarm their fears, or to inflame their resentment : gentlemen 
have talked as if the question was, whether we may with safety 
to ourselves, relax or repeal the laws which have so long con- 
cerned our catholic fellow subjects ? The real question is, whe- 
ther you can, with safety to the Irish constitution, refuse such a 
measure 1 It is not a question merely of their sufferings or their 
relief, it is a question of your own preservation. 

There are some maxims, which an honest Irishman will never 
abandon, and by which every public measure may be fairly 
tried. These are, the preservation of the constitution upon the 
principles established at the revolution, in church and state; and 
next, the independency of Ireland, connected with Britain as a 
confederated people, and united indissolubly under a common 
and inseparable crown. If you wish to know how these great 
objects may be affected by a repeal of those laws, see how they 
were affected by their enaction. Here you have the infallible 
test of fact and experience ; and wretched indeed must you be, 
if false shame, false pride, false fear, false spirit, can prevent 
you from reading that lesson of wisdom which is written in the 
blood and calamities of your country. 

Here Mr. Curran went into a detail of the property laws as 
they affected the catholics of Ireland. He described them as 
destructive of arts, of industry, of private morals and public 
order, as extirpating even the christian religion among them, 
and reducing them to the condition of savages and rebels, dis- 
graceful to humanity, and formidable to the state. Having 
traced the progress and effects of those laws from the revolution 
in 1779 ;— 

Let me now ask you, said he, how have those laws alfected the 



SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 81 

protestant subject and the protestant constitution. In that in- 
terval were they free 1 Did they possess that hberty which they 
denied to their brethren ? No, sir ; where there are inhabitants, 
but no people, there can be no freedom ; unless there be a spirit, 
and what may be called a pull in the people, a free government 
cannot be kept steady or fixed in its seat. You had indeed a 
government, but it was planted in civil dissension, and watered 
in civil blood; and whilst the virtuous luxuriance of its branches 
aspired to heaven, its infernal roots shot downward to their con- 
genial regions, and were intertwined in hell. Your ancestors 
thought themselves the oppressors of their fellow-subjects, but 
they were only their jailors, and the justice of providence would 
have been frustrated, if their own slavery had not been the 
punishment of their vice and their folly. 

But are those facts for which we must appeal to history 1 You 
all remember the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy- 
nine. What were you then ? Your constitution, without resist- 
ance, in the hands of the British parliament; your trade in many 
parts extinguished, in every part coerced. So low were you 
reduced to beggary and servitude, as to declare, that unless the 
mercy of England was extended to your trade, you could not 
subsist. Here you have an infalUble test of the ruinous influ- 
ence of those laws in the experience of a century ; of a consti- 
tution surrendered, and commerce utterly extinct. But can you 
learn nothing on this subject from the events that followed ? In 
1778, you somewhat relaxed the severity of those laws, and im- 
proved, in some degree, the condition of the catholics. What 
was the consequence even of a partial union with your country- 
men 1 The united efforts of the two bodies restored that con- 
stitution which had been lost by their separation. In 1782 you 
became free. Your catholic brethren shared the danger of the 
conflict, but you had not justice or gratitude to let them share 
the fruits of the victory. You suffered them to relapse into 
their former insignificance and depression. And let me ask you, 
has it not fared with you according to your deserts ? Let me ask 
you, if the parliament of Ireland can boast of being now less at 
the feet of the British minister, than at that period it was of the 
British parliament ? Here he observed on the conduct of the 
administration for some years past, in the accumulation of public 
burdens and parliamentary influence : but, said he, it is not the 
/ 



82 SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 

mere increase of debt ; it is not the creation of one hundred and 
ten placemen and pensioners that forms the real cause of the 
public malady. The real cause is the exclusion of your people 
from all influence upon the representative. The question 
therefore is, whether you will seek your own safety in the resto- 
ration of your fellow subjects, or whether you will choose rather 
to perish than be just 1 He then proceeded to examine the ob- 
jections to a general incorporation of the catholics. On general 
principles, no man could justify the deprivation of civil rights 
on any ground but that of forfeiture for some offence. The 
papist of the last century might forfeit his property for ever, for 
that was his own ; but he could not forfeit the rights and capa- 
cities of his, unborn posterity. And let me observe, said he, that 
even those laws against the offender himself were enacted while 
injuries were recent, and while men were not unnaturally alarm- 
ed by the consideration of a French monarchy, a pretender, and 
a pope ; things that we now read of, but can see no more. But 
are they disaffected to liberty ? On what ground can such an 
imputation be supported? Do you see any instance of any 
man's religious theory governing his civil or political conduct ? 
Is popery an enemy to freedom? Look to France, and be answered. 
Is protestantism necessarily its friend ? You are protestants ; 
look to yourselves, and be refuted. But look further. Do you 
fmd even the religious sentiments of secretaries marked by the 
supposed characteristics of their sects ? Do you find that a pro- 
testant Briton can be a bigot with only two sacraments, and a 
catholic Frenchman a deist, admitting seven ? But you affect 
to think your property in danger by admitting them into the 
state. That has been already refuted : but you yourselves re- 
futed your own objection. Seventeen years ago you expressed the 
same fear, yet you made the experiment ; you opened the door 
to landed property, and the fact has shown the fear to be without 
foundation. 

But another curious topic has been stated again ; the protest- 
ant ascendancy is in danger. What do you mean by that word ? 
Do you mean the right, and property, and dignities of the church ? 
If you do, you must feel they are safe. They are secured by 
the law, by the coronation oath, by a protestant parliament, a 
protestant king, a protestant confederated nation. Do you mean 
the free and protected exercise of the protestant religion 1 You 



SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 83 

know it has the same security to support it. Or do you mean 
the just and honourable support of the numerous and meritorious 
clergy of your own country, who really discharge the labours 
and duties of the ministry ? As to that, let me say, that if we 
felt on that subject as we ought, we should not have so many 
men of talents and virtues struggling under the difficulties of their 
scanty pittance, and feeling the melancholy conviction that no 
virtues or talents can give them any hope of advancement. If 
you really mean the preservation of every right and every honour 
that can dignify a christian priest and give authority to his func- 
tion, I will protect them as zealously as you. I will ever respect 
and revere the man who employs himself in diffusing light, hope, 
and consolation. But if you mean by ascendancy, the power of 
persecution, I detest and abhor it. If you mean the ascendancy 
of an Enghsh school over an Irish university, I cannot look upon 
it without aversion. An ascendancy of that form raises to my 
mind a little greasy emblem of stall-fed theology, imported from 
some foreign land, with the graces of a lady's maid, the dignity 
of a side-table, the temperance of a larder, its sobriety the dregs 
of a patron's bottle, and its wisdom the dregs of a patron's under- 
standing, brought hither to devour, to degrade, and to defame. 
Is it to such a thing you would have it thought that you affixed 
the idea of the protestant ascendancy? But it is said, admit them 
by degrees, and do not run the risque of too precipitate an in- 
corporation. I conceive both the argument and the fact un- 
founded. In a mixed government, like ours, an increase of the 
democratic power can scarcely ever be dangerous. - None of the 
three powers of our constitution act singly in the line of its natu- 
ral direction ; each is necessarily tempered and diverted by the 
action of the other two : and hence it is, that though the power 
of the crown has, perhaps, far transcended the degree to which 
theory might confine it, the liberty of the British constitution may 
not be in much danger. An increase of power to any of the three, 
acts finally upon the state with a very diminished influence, and 
therefore great indeed must be that increase in any one of them, 
which can endanger the practical balance of the constitution. 
Still, however, I contend not against the caution of a gradual ad- 
mission. But let me ask you, can you admit them any otherwise 
than gradually ? The striking and melancholy symptom of the 
public disease is, that if it recovers at all it can be only through 



84 SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 

a feeble and lingering convalescence. Yet even this gradual ad- 
mission your catholic brethren do not ask, save under every pledge 
and every restriction, which your justice and wisdom can recom- 
mend to your adoption. 

He called on the house to consider the necessity of acting with a 
social and conciliatory mind. That contrary conduct may per- 
haps protract the unhappy depression of our country, but a par- 
tial liberty cannot long subsist. A disunited people cannot long 
subsist. With infinite regret must any man look forward to the 
alienation of three millions of our people, and to a degree of sub- 
serviency and corruption in the fourth : I am sorry, said he, to 
think it is so very easy to conceive, that in case of such an event 
the inevitable consequence would be, an union with Great Britain. 
And if any one desires to know what that would be, I will tell 
him : it would be the emigration of every man of coyiseqiience from 
Ireland; it would he the participation of British taxes without British 
trade ; it would be the extitiction of the Irish name as a people. We 
should become a wretched colony, perhaps leased out to a company of 
Jews, as was formerly in contemplation, and governed by a few tax- 
gatherers and excise-meti, tinless possibly you may add fifteen or twenty 
couple of Irish members, who might be found every session sleeping in 
their collars tinder the manger of the British minister. 

Mr. Curran then entered largely into the state of the empire 
and of its allies, of the disposition of our enemies towards Great 
Britain, of the nature of their political principles, and of the ra- 
pid dissemination of those principles. He declared that it was 
difficult to tell whether the dissemination of these principles was 
likely to be more encouraged by the continuance of the war or 
by the establishment of a peace ; and if the war was, as has been 
repeatedly insisted on, a war on our part for the preservation of 
social order and of limited monarchy, he strongly urged the im- 
mediate necessity of making those objects the common interest 
and the common cause of every man in the nation. He repro- 
bated the idea of any disloyalty in the catholics, an idea, which, 
he said, was sometimes more than intimated, and sometimes as 
vehemently disclaimed by the enemies of catholic emancipation ; 
but, he said, the catholics were men, and were of course sensible 
to the impression of kindness, and injury, and of insult ; that they 
knew their rights, and felt their wrongs, and that nothing but the 
grossest ignorance, or the meanest hypocrisy could represent them 



SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EjMANCIPATION. 85 

as cringing with a slavish fondness to those who oppressed and in- 
sulted them. He sought, he said, to remove their oppressions, in 
order to make the interests of the w^hole nation one and the same, 
and to that great object, the resolution, moved by his right ho- 
nourable friend manifestly tended ; and he lamented exceedingly, 
that so indecent and so disingenuous a way of evading that motion 
had been resorted to, as passing to the order of the day, a conduct, 
that, however speciously the gentleman who had adopted it might 
endeavour to excuse, he declared, could be regarded by the 
catholics, and by the public, no otherwise than as an expression 
of direct hostility to the catholic claims. He animadverted, with 
much severity, upon an observation from the other side of the 
house, that the catholics were already in possession of political li- 
berty, and were only seeking for political power. He asked, what 
was it then that we were so anxiously withholding, and so gree- 
dily monopolizing ; and declared, that the answer which had been 
given that observation, by a learned and honourable friend near 
him (Mr. Wm. Smith) was that of a true patriot, and of a sound 
constitutional lav^ryer ; namely, that civil liberty was a shadow, 
without a sufficient portion of political power to protect it. 

Having replied to the arguments of several members that 
had preceded him in the debate, Mr. Curran came to the 
speech that had been delivered by Dr. Duigenan, and enter- 
tained the house, for about half an hour, with one of the most 
lively sallies of wit and humour that we remember to have 
heard. He said, that the learned doctor had made himself a 
very prominent figure in the debate ! Furious indeed had been 
his anger, and manifold his attack ; what argument, or what 
man, or what thing, had he not abused ? Half choaked by his 
rage in refuting those who had spoke, he had relieved himself 
by attacking those who had not spoke ; he had abused the ca- 
tholics, he had abused their ancestors, he had abused the mer- 
chants of Ireland, he had abused Mr. Burke, he had abused 
those who voted for the order of the day. I do not know, said 
Mr. Curran, but I ought to be obliged to the learned doctor, for 
honouring me with a place in the invective ; he has called me 
the bottle-holder of my right honourable friend ; sure I am, said 
he, that if I had been the bottle-holder of both, the learned doc- 
tor would have less reason to complain of me than my right ho- 
nourable friend ; for him I should have left perfectly sober, whilst 



86 SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 

it would very clearly appear, that, with respect to the learned 
doctor, the bottle had not only been managed fairly, but gener- 
ously ; and, that if, in furnishing him with liquor, I had not fur- 
nished him with argument, I had, at least, furnished him with a 
good excuse for wanting it ; with the best excuse for that con- 
fusion of history, and divinity, and civil law, and canon law, that 
rollocking mixture of politics, and theology, and antiquity, with 
which he has overwhelmed the debate, for the havoc and carnage 
he has made of the population of the last age, and the fury with 
which he seemed determined to exterminate, and even to devour 
the population of this ; and which urged him, after tearing and 
gnawing the characters of the catholics, to spend the last efforts 
of his rage with the most unrelenting ferocity, in actually gnaw- 
ing their names, [alluding to Dr. Duigenan's pronunciation of the 
name of Mr. Keogh, and which Mr. Curran said, was a kind of 
pronuntiatory defamation.] In truth, sir, said he, I felt some 
surprise, and some regret, when I heard him describe the sceptre 
of lath, and the tiara of straw, and mimic his bedlamite emperor 
and pope with such refined and happy gesticulation, that he could 
be prevailed on to quit so congenial a company. I should not, 
however, said he, be disposed to hasten his return to them, or to 
precipitate the excess of his fit, if by a most unlucky felicity of 
indiscretion, he had not dropped some doctrines which the silent 
approbation of the minister seemed to have adopted. Mr. Curran 
said, he did not mean amongst these doctrines to place the learn- 
ed doctor's opinions touching the revolution, nor his wise and va- 
lorous plan, in case of an invasion, of arming the beadles and the 
sextons, and putting himself in wind for an attack upon the French 
by a massacre of the papists ; the doctrine he meant was, that 
catholic franchise was inconsistent with British connexion. 
Strong, indeed, said he, must the minister be in so wild and desper- 
ate a prejudice, if he can venture, in the fallen state of the em- 
pire, under the disasters of the war, and with an enemy at the 
gate, if he can dare to state to the great body of the Irish nation, 
that their slavery is the condition of their connexion with Eng- 
land ; that she is more afraid of yielding to Irish liberty than of 
losing Irish connexion ; and the denunciation, he said, was not 
yet upon record, it might yet be left with the learned doctor, who 
he hoped, had embraced it only to make it odious, had hugged 
it in his arms with the generous purpose of plunging with it into 



SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 87 

the deep, and exposing it to merited derision, even at the hazard 
of the character of his own sanity. It was yet in the power of 
the minister to decide, whether a blasphemy of this kind should 
pass for the mere ravings of frenzy, or for the solemn and mis- 
chievous lunacy of a minister : he called therefore again, to rouse 
that minister from his trance, and in the hearing of the two coun- 
tries, to put that question to him, which must be heard by a third, 
Whether at no period, upon no event, at no extremity, we were 
to hope for any connexion with Britain, except that of the mas- 
ter and the slave ; and this even without the assertion of any 
fact that could support such a proscription ? 

It was necessary, he found, to state the terms and the nature 
of the connexion ; it had been grossly misrepresented ; it was a 
great federal contract between perfectly equal nations, pledging 
themselves to equal fate, upon the terms of equal liberty, upon 
perfectly equal hberty. The motive to that contract was the 
mutual benefit to each, the object of it, their mutual and com- 
mon benefit ; the condition of the compact was, the honest and 
fair performance of it, and from that only, arose the obligation 
of it. If England showed a decided purpose of invading our 
liberty, the compact by such an act of foulness and perfidy was 
broken, and the connexion utterly at an end : but, he said, the 
resolution moved for by his right honourable friend to the test 
of this connexion, to invade our liberty, was a dissolution of it. 

But what is liberty as known to our constitution ? It is a por- 
tion of political power necessary to its conservation ; as, for in- 
stance, the liberty of the commons of those kingdoms is that right, 
accompanied with a portion of political power to preserve it 
against the crown and against the aristocracy. It is by invading 
the power that the right is attacked in any of its constituent parts ; 
hence it is, that if the crown shows a deliberate design of so de- 
stroying it, it is an abdication ; and let it be remembered 
that by our compact we have given up no constitutional right. 
He said, therefore, that he was warranted, as a constitutional 
lawyer, in stating, that if the crown or its ministers, by force or 
by fraud, destroyed that fair representation of the people, by 
which alone they could be protected in their liberty, it was a 
direct breach of the contract of connexion ; and he could not 
scruple to say, that if a house of commons could be so debauched 
as to deny the right stated in the resolution, it was out of their 
2L 



88 SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 

own moullis conclusive evidence of the fact. He insisted that 
the claim of the catholics to that right, was directly within the 
spirit of the compact ; and what have been the arguments ad- 
vanced against the claim ? One was an argument wliich, if 
founded in fact, would have some weight ; it was that the catho- 
lics did not make the claim at all. Another argument was used 
which he thought had as little foundation in fact, and was very 
easy to be reconciled to the other ; it was, that the catholics 
made their claim with insolence, and attempted to carry their 
object by intimidation. Let gentlemen take this fact if they 
please, in opposition to their own denial of it. The catholics 
then do make the demand ; is their demand just 1 Is it just that 
they should be free ? Is it just that they should have franchise ? 
The justice is expressly admitted; why not give it then? The 
answer is, they demand it with insolence. Suppose that asser- 
tion, false as it is in fact, to be true, is it any argument with a 
public assembly, that any incivility of demand can cover the in- 
justice of refusal. How low must that assembly be fallen, which 
can suggest as an apology for the refusal of an incontestible right 
the answer which a bankrupt buck might give to the demand 
of his tailor ; he will not pay the bill, because, " the rascal had 
dared to threaten his honour." As another argument against 
their claims, their principles had been maligned ; the experience 
of a century was the refutation of the aspersion. The articles 
of their faith had been opposed by the learned doctor to the va- 
lidity of their claims. Can their religion, said he, be an objec- 
tion, where a total absence of all religion, where atheism itself 
is none 1 The learned doctor, no doubt, thought he was praising 
the mercy with which they had been governed, when he dilated 
upon their poverty ; but can poverty be an objection in an as- 
sembly, whose humble and christian condescension shut not its 
doors even against the common beggar ? He had traduced some 
of them by name ; " Mr. Byrne and Mr. Keogh, and four or five 
ruffians from the Liberty :" but, said Mr. Curran, this is some- 
thing better than frenzy ; this is something better than the want 
of mere feeling and decorum ; there could not, perhaps, be a 
better way of evincing a further and more important want of 
the Irish nation, the want of a reformed representation of the 
people in parliament. For what can impress the necessity of it 
more strongly upon the justice, upon the humanity, the indigna- 



SPEECH ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 89 

tion, and the shame of an assembly of Irish gentlemen, than to 
find the people so stripped of all share in the representation, as 
that the most respectable class of our fellow-citizens, men who 
had acquired wealth upon the noblest principle, the practice of 
commercial industry and integrity, could be made the butts of 
such idle and unavailing, such shameful abuse, without the pos- 
sibility of having an opportunity to vindicate themselves ; when 
men of that class can be exposed to the degradation of unan- 
swered calunmy, or the more bitter degradation of eleemosynary 
defence ? 

Mr. Curran touched upon a variety of other topics, and conclu- 
ded with the most forcible appeal to the minister, to the house, 
and to the country, upon the state of public affairs at home and 
abroad. He insisted that the measure was not, as it had been 
stated to be, a measure of mere internal policy ; it was a mea- 
sure that involved the question of right and wrong, of just and 
unjust : but it was more, it was a measure of the most absolute 
necessity, which could not be denied, and which could not safely 
be delayed. He could not, he said, foresee future events ; he 
could not be appalled by the future, for he could not see it ; but 
the present he could see, and he could not but see that it was 
big with danger; it might be the crisis of political life, or political 
extinction ; it was a time fairly to state to the country, whether 
they had any thing, and what to fight for ; whether they are to 
struggle for a connexion of tyranny, or of privilege ; whether 
the administration of England will let us condescend to forgive 
the insolence of her happier days ; or whether, as the beams of 
her prosperity have wasted and consumed us, so even the frosts 
of her adversity shall perform the deleterious effects of fire, and 
burn upon our privileges and our hopes for ever. 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

IN BEHALF OF ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. FOR A 
LIBEL* IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH, IRELAND. 

On the 29th of January, 1794. 



The Society of United Irishme?i at Dublin, to the Volunteers of Ire- 
land. William Drennan, Chairman ; Archibald Hamilton Row- 
an, Secretary. 



Be It remembered, that the right honourable Arthur Wolfe, 
attorney -general of our present sovereign lord the king, gives the 
court here to understand and be informed, that Archibald Hamil- 
ton Rowan, of the city of Dublin, Esq. being a person of a wicked 
and turbulent disposition, did on the sixteenth day of December, 
in the thirty-third year of the reign of our present sovereign lord 
George the third, publish a certain false, wicked, malicious, 
scandalous, and seditious libel, that is to say : 

" Citizen Soldiers, — You first took up arms to protect your 
country from foreign enemies and from domestic disturbance ; 
for the same purpose it now becomes necessary that you 
should resume them ; a proclamation has been issued in Eng- 
land for embodying the militia, and a proclamation has been 
issued by the lord lieutenant and council in Ireland, for re- 
pressing all seditious associations. In consequence of both these 
proclamations it is reasonable to apprehend danger from abroad 
and danger at home ; from whence but from apprehended dan- 

* That the reader may better understand several passages of the following speech, 
an abstract of the information filed by the attorney-general against Mr. Rowan is pre- 
fixed. 

90 



SPEECH IN BEHALF OF A. H. ROWAN, Esq. 91 

ger are these menacing preparations for war drawn through the 
streets of this capital 1 for whence, if not to create that internal 
commotion which was not found, to shake that credit which was 
not affected, to blast that volunteer honour which was hitherto 
inviolate, are those terrible suggestions and rumours and whispers 
that meet us at every corner, and agitate at least our old men, 
our women, and our children : whatever be the motive, or from 
whatever quarter it arises, alarm has arisen ; and you, volunteers 
of Ireland, are therefore summoned to arms at the instance of 
government, as well as by the responsibility attached to your 
character, and the permanent obligations of your institution. We 
will not at this day condescend to quote authorities for the right of 
having and of using arms, but we will cry aloud, even amidst the 
storm raised by the witchcraft of a proclamation, that to your 
formation was owing the peace and protection of this island, to 
your relaxation has been owing its relapse into impotence and 
insignificance, to your renovation must be owing its future free- 
dom and its present tranquillity : you are therefore summoned to 
arms, in order to preserve your country in that guarded quiet 
which may secure it from external hostility, and to maintain that 
internal regimen throughout the land, which, superseding a no- 
torious police or a suspected militia, may preserve the blessings 
of peace by a vigilant preparation for war, — Citizen soldiers, to 
arms ! Take up the shield of freedom and the pledges of peace 
— peace, the motive and end of your virtuous institution — war, 
an occasional duty, ought never to be made an occupation ; every 
man should become a soldier in the defence of his rights ; no man 
ought to continue a soldier for offending the rights of others : the 
sacrifice of life in the service of our country is a duty much 
too honourable to be intrusted to mercenaries; and at this time, 
when your country has, by public authority, been declared in 
danger, we conjure you by your interest, your duty, and your 
glory, to stand to your arms, and in spite of a police, in spite of 
a fencible militia, in virtue of two proclamations, to maintain 
good order in your vicinage, and tranquillity in Ireland : it 
is only by the military array of men in whom they confide, 
whom they have been accustomed to revere as the guar- 
dians of domestic peace, the protectors of their liberties and lives, 
that the present agitation of the people can be stilled, that tu- 
mult and Hcentiousness can be repressed, obedience secured to 



92 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

existing law, and a calm confidence diffused through the public 
mind in the speedy resurrection of a free constitution, of liberty 
and of equality, — words which we use for an opportunity of re- 
pelling calumny, and of saying, that by liberty we never under- 
stood unlimited freedom, nor by equality the levelling of property 
or the destruction of subordination ; this is a calumny invented 
by that faction, or that gang, which misrepresents the king to the 
people, and the people to the king, traduces one half of the na- 
tion to cajole the other, and by keeping up mistrust and division 
wishes to continue the proud arbitrators of the fortune and fate of 
Ireland : liberty is the exercise of all our rights, natural and po- 
litical, secured to us and our posterity by a real representation 
of the people : and equality is the extension of the constituent to 
the fullest dimensions of the constitution, of the elective fran- 
chise to the whole body of the people, to the end that govern- 
ment, which is collective power, may be guided by collective 
will, and that legislation may originate from public reason, keep 
pace with public improvement, and terminate in public happi- 
ness. If our constitution be imperfect, nothing but a reform in 
representation will rectify its abuses; if it be perfect, nothing but 
the same reform will perpetuate its blessings. We now address 
you as citizens, for to be citizens you became soldiers, nor can we 
help wishing that all soldiers, partaking the passions and interests 
of the people, would remember, that they were once citizens, 
that seduction made them soldiers, but nature made them men. 
We address you without any authority save that of reason, and 
if we obtain the coincidence of public opinion, it is neither by 
force nor stratagem, for we have no power to terrify, no artifice 
to cajole, no fund to seduce ; here we sit without mace or beadle, 
neither a mystery, nor a craft, nor a corporation ; in four words 
lies all our power — universal emancipation and representative 
legislature — yet we are confident, that on the pivot of this prin- 
ciple, a convention, still less a society, still less a single man, will 
be able first to move and then to raise the world : we therefore 
wish for catholic emancipation without any modification, but still 
we consider this necessary enfranchisement as merely the portal 
to the temple of national freedom ; wide as this entrance is, wide 
enough to admit three millions, it is narrow when compared to 
the capacity and comprehension of our beloved principle, which 
takes in every individual of the Irish nation, casts an equal eye 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 93 

over the whole island, embraces all that think, and feels for all 
that suffer : the catholic cause is subordinate to our cause, and 
included in it ; for, as united Irishmen, we adhere to no sect, but 
to society — to no cause, but Christianity — to no party, but the 
whole people. In the sincerity of our souls do we desire catholic 
emancipation : but were it obtained to-morrow, to-morrow would 
we go on as we do to-day, in the pursuit of that reform, which 
would still be wanting to ratify their liberties as well as our own. 
For both these purposes it appears necessary that provincial con- 
ventions should assemble preparatory to the convention of the 
protestant people ; the delegates of the catholic body are not jus- 
tified in communicating with individuals or even bodies of inferior 
authority, and therefore an assembly of a similar nature and or- 
ganization is necessary to establish an intercourse of sentiments, 
an uniformity of conduct, an united cause and an united nation ; 
if a convention on the one part does not soon follow, and is not 
soon connected with that on the other, the common cause will 
split into the partial interest, the people will relapse into inatten- 
tion and inertness, the union of affection and exertion, will dis- 
solve, and too probably some local insurrections, instigated by the 
malignity of our common enemy, may commit the character, and 
risk the tranquillity of the island, which can be obviated only 
by the influence of an assembly arising from, assimilated with the 
people, and whose spirit may be, as it were, knit with the soul 
of the nation : unless the sense of the protestant people be on 
their part as fairly collected, and as judicially directed, unless 
individual exertion consolidates into collective strength, unless 
the particles unite into one mass ; we may, perhaps, serve some 
person or some party for a little, but the public not at all : the 
nation is neither insolent, nor rebellious, nor seditious ; while it 
knows its rights, it is unwiUing to manifest its powers ; it would 
rather supplicate administration to anticipate revolution by well- 
timed reform, and to save their country in mercy to themselves. 
The fifteenth of February approaches, a day ever memorable in 
the annals of the country as the birth-day of new Ireland : let 
parochial meetings be held as soon as possible, let each parish re- 
turn delegates, let the sense of Ulster be again declared from 
Dungannon on a day auspicious to union, peace, and freedom, 
and the spirit of the North will again become the spirit of the na- 
tion. The civil assembly ought to claim the attendance of the 



94 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

military associations ; and we have addressed ymi, citizen soldiers, 
on this subject, from the belief, that your body, uniting conviction 
with zeal, and zeal with activity, may have much influence over 
your countrymen, your relations, and friends. We offer only a 
general outline to the public, and, meaning to address Ireland, 
presume not at present to till up the plan, or pre-occupy the 
mode of its execution. We have thought it our duty to speak ; 
answer us by actions ; you have taken time for consideration ; 
fourteen long years have elapsed since the rise of your associa- 
tions ; and in 1782 did you imagine that in 1792 this nation 
would still remain unrepresented 1 How many nations in this 
interval have gotten the start of Ireland ? How many of your 
countrymen have sunk into the grave ?" 



A jury being sworn, the attorney-general stated the case on 
the part of the crown ; the evidence being gone through on both 
sides, 

Mr. Curran. — Gentleme7i of the Jury. — When I consider the 
period at which this prosecution is brought forward ; when I be- 
hold the extraordinary safe guard of armed soldiers resorted to,* 
no doubt for the preservation of peace and order ; when I catch, 
as I cannot but do, the throb of public anxiety which beats from 
one end to the other of this hall ; when I reflect on what may 
be the fate of a man of the most beloved personal character, of 
one of the most respected families of our country, himself the only 
individual of that family, I may almost say of that country, who 
can look to that possible fate with unconcern ? Feeling as I do 
all these impressions, it is in the honest simplicity of my heart I 
speak, when I say, that 1 never rose in a court of justice with so 
much embarrassment, as upon this occasion. 

If, gentlemen, I could entertain a hope of finding refuge for 
the disconcertion of my mind in the perfect composure of yours ; 
if I could suppose that those awful vicissitudes of human events, 
which have been stated or alluded to, could leave your judg- 
ments undisturbed and your hearts at ease, I know I should form 
a most erroneous opinion of your character : I entertain no such 

* A few moments before Mr. Curran entered into liis client's defence, a guar J was 
brought into the court-house by the sheriff. 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 95 

chimerical hope ; I form no such unworthy opinion ; I expect not 
that your hearts can be more at ease than my own ; I have no 
right to expect it ; but I have a right to call upon you in the 
name of your country, in the name of the living God, of whose eter- 
nal justice you are now administering that portion, vi^hich dwells 
with us on this side of the grave, to discharge your breasts, as far 
as you are able, of every bias of prejudice or passion ; that, if 
my client be guilty of the offence charged upon him, you may 
give tranquillity to the public by a firm verdict of conviction ; 
or, if he be innocent, by as firm a verdict of acquittal; and that 
you will do this in defiance of the paltry artifices and senseless 
clamours that have been resorted to, in order to bring him to 
his trial with anticipated conviction. And, gentlemen, I feel an 
additional necessity of thus conjuring you to be upon your guard, 
from the able and imposing statement, which you have just heard 
on the part of the prosecution. I know well the virtues and the 
talents of the excellent person who conducts that prosecution.* 
I know how much he would disdain to impose on you by the 
trappings of office ; but I also know how easily we mistake the 
lodgment which character and eloquence can make upon our 
feelings, for those impressions that reason and fact and proof only 
ought to work upon our understandings. 

Perhaps, gentlemen, I shall act not unwisely in waving any 
further observation of this sort, and giving your minds an oppor- 
tunity of growing cool and resuming themselves, by coming to a 
calm and uncoloured statement of mere facts, premising only to 
you, that I have it in strictest injunction from my client, to 
defend him upon facts and evidence only, and to avail myself of 
no technical artifice or subtilty that could withdraw his cause 
from the test of that inquiry which it is your province to exercise, 
and to which only he wishes to be indebted for an acquittal. 

In the month of December 1792, Mr. Rowan was arrested on 
an information, charging him with the offence for which he is 
now on his trial. He was taken before an honourable personage 
now on that bench, and admitted to bail.f 

He remained a considerable time in this city, soliciting the pre- 
sent prosecution, and offering himself to a fair trial by a jury of his 
country ; but it was not then thought fit to yield to that solicita- 

* The late lord Kilwarden, then attorney-general. 
i The honourable justice Downes. 

2M 



96 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

tion ; nor has it now been thought proper to prosecute him in the 
ordinary way, by sending up a bill of indictment to a grand jury. 

I do not mean by this to say that informations ex officio are 
always oppressive or unjust ; but I cannot but observe to you, 
that when a petty jury is called upon to try a charge not pre- 
viously found by the grand inquest, and supported by the naked 
assertion only of the king's prosecutor, that the accusation la- 
bours under a weakness of probability which it is difficult to assist. 
If the charge had no cause of dreading the light — if it was likely 
to find the sanction of a grand jury, it is not easy to account 
why it deserted the more usual, the more popular, and the more 
constitutional mode, and preferred to come forward in the un- 
gracious form of an ex officio information. 

If such a bill had been sent up and found, Mr. Rowan would 
have been tried at the next commission ; but a speedy trial was not 
the wish of his prosecutors. An information was filed, and when 
he expected to be tried upon it, an error, it seems, was discover- 
ed in the record. Mr. Rowan offered to waive it, or consent 
to any amendment desired. No — that proposal could not be ac- 
cepted — a trial must have followed. That information, there- 
fore, was withdrawn, and a new one filed: that is, in fact, a third 
prosecution was instituted upon the same charge. This last was 
filed on the 8th day of last July. 

Gentlemen, these facts cannot fail of a due impression upon 
you. You will find a material part of your inquiry must be, 
whether Mr. Rowan is pursued as a criminal, or hunted down 
as a victim. It is not, therefore, by insinuation or circuity, but 
it is boldly and directly that I assert, that oppression has been 
intended and practised upon him, and by those facts which I 
have stated, I am warranted in the assertion. 

His demand, his entreaty to be tried was refused, — and why ? 
A hue and cry was to be raised against him ; the sword was to 
be suspended over his head ; some time was necessary for the 
public mind to become heated by the circulation of artful clamours 
of anarchy and rebellion ; these same clamours, which with more 
probability, but not more success, had been circulated before 
through England and Scotland. In this country the causes and 
the swiftness of their progress were as obvious, as their folly has 
since become, to every man of the smallest observation : I have 
been stopped myself, with, " Good God, sir, have you heard the 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 97 

news ?" " No, sir, what ?" — " Why one French emissary was seen 
travelling through Connaught in a post chaise, and scattering 
from the windows as he passed little doses of political poison, made 
up in square bits of paper — another was actually surprised in 
the fact of seducing our good people from their allegiance, by 
discourses upon the indivisibility of French robbery and massacre, 
which he preached in the French language to a congregation of 
Irish peasants." 

Such are the bugbears and spectres to be raised to warrant 
the sacrifice of whatever little pubhc spirit may remain amongst 
us. — But time has also detected the imposture of these Cock-lane 
apparitions, and you cannot now, with your eyes open, give a 
verdict without asking your consciences this question ; is this a 
fair and honest prosecution ? — is it brought forward with the sin- 
gle view of vindicating public justice, and promoting public good ? 
And here let me remind you, that you are not convened to try 
the guilt of a libel, affecting the personal character of any pri- 
vate man : I know no case in which a jury ought to be more se- 
vere, than where personal calumny is conveyed through a vehi- 
cle, which ought to be consecrated to public information ; neither 
on the other hand, can I conceive any case in which the firm- 
ness and the caution of a jury should be more exerted, than 
when a subject is prosecuted for a libel on the state. The pe- 
culiarity of the British constitution, (to which in its fullest extent 
we have an undoubted right, however distant we may be from 
the actual enjoyment) and in which it surpasses every known go- 
vernment in Europe, is this ; that its only professed object is the 
general good, and its only foundation the general will ; hence 
the people have a right acknowledged from time immemorial, 
fortified by a pile of statutes, and authenticated by a revolution 
that speaks louder than them all, to see whether abuses have been 
committed, and whether their properties and their liberties have 
been attended to as they ought to be. 

This is a kind of subject which I feel myself overawed when I 
approach; there are certain fundamental principles which nothing 
but necessity should expose to public examination ; they are pil- 
lars, the depth of whose foundation you cannot explore without 
endangering their strength; but let it be recollected that the 
discussion of such topics should not be condemned in me, nor visi- 
ted upon my client : the blame, if any there be, should rest only 



98 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

with those who have forced them into discussion. I say, there- 
fore, it is the right of the people to keep an eternal watch upon 
the conduct of their rulers ; and in order to that, the freedom of 
the press has been cherished by the law of England. In private 
defamation let it never be tolerated ; in wicked and wanton as- 
persion upon a good and honest administration let it never be 
supported. Not that a good government can be exposed to dan- 
ger by groundless accusation, but because a bad government is 
sure to find in the detected falsehood of a licentious press a secu- 
rity and a credit, which it could never otherwise obtain. 

I said a good government cannot be endangered ; I say so 
again, for whether it is good or bad it can never depend upon 
assertion : the question is decided by simple inspection : to try 
the tree, look at its fruit ; to judge of the government, look at the 
people. What is the fruit of a good government ? The virtue 
and happiness of the people. Do four millions of people in this 
country gather those fruits from that government, to whose in- 
jured purity, to whose spotless virtue and violated honour, this 
seditious and atrocious libeller is to be immolated upon the altar 
of the constitution ? To you, gentlemen of the jury, who are 
bound by the most sacred obligation to your country and your 
God, to speak nothing but the truth, I put the question — Do the 
people of this country gather those fruits? Are they orderly, 
industrious, religious, and contented? Do you find them free 
from bigotry and ignorance, those inseparable concomitants of 
systematic oppression ? Or to try them by a test as unerring 
as any of the former, are they united ? The period has now 
elapsed in which considerations of this extent would have been 
deemed improper to a jury ; happily for these countries, the 
legislature of each has lately changed, or, perhaps to speak more 
properly, revived and restored the law respecting trials of this 
kind. For the space of thirty or forty years a usage had pre- 
vailed in Westminster-hall, by which the judges assumed to them- 
selves the decision of the question, whether libel or not ; but the 
learned counsel for the prosecution are nov\^ obliged to admit that 
this is a question for the jury only to decide. You will naturally 
listen with respect to the opinion of the court, but you will re- 
ceive it as matter of advice, not as matter of law ; and you will 
give it credit, not from any adventitious circumstances of autho- 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 99 

rity, but merely so far as it meets the concurrence of your own 
understandings. 

Give me leave now to state to you the charge, as it stands upon 
the record : — It is, " that Mr. Rowan, being a person of a wicked 
and turbulent disposition, and maliciously designing and intending 
to excite and ditfuse among the subjects of this realm of Ireland 
discontents, jealousies, and suspicions of our lord the king and his 
government, and disaffection and disloyalty to the person and 
government of our said lord the king, and to raise very dangerous 
seditions and tumults within this kingdom of Ireland, and to draw 
the government of this kingdom into great scandal, infamy, and 
disgrace, and to incite the subjects of our said lord the king to 
attempt, by force and violence and with arms, to make altera- 
tions in the government, state, and constitution of this kingdom, 
and to incite his majesty's said subjects to tumult and anarchy, 
and to overturn the established constitution of this kingdom, and 
to overawe and intimidate the legislature of this kingdom by an 
armed force ;" did " maliciously and seditiously" publish the pa- 
per in question. 

Gentlemen, without any observation of mine, you must see 
that this information contains a direct charge upon Mr. Rowan ; 
namely, that he did, with the intents set forth in the information, 
publish this paper ; so that here you have in fact two or three 
questions for your decision : first, the matter of fact of the publi- 
cation; namely, did Mr. Rowan publish that paper? If Mr. 
Rowan did not in fact publish that paper, you have no longer any 
question on which to employ your minds : if you think that he 
was in fact the publisher, then and not till then arises the great 
and important subject to which your judgments must be directed. 
And that comes shortly and simply to this : Is the paper a libel 1 
and did he publish it with the intent charged in the information 1 
For whatever you may think of the abstract question, whether 
the paper be libellous or not, and of which paper it has not even 
been insinuated that he is the author, there can be no ground for 
a verdict against him, unless you also are persuaded that what he 
did was done with a criminal design. 

I wish, gentlemen, to simplify and not to perplex ; I therefore say 
again, if these three circumstances conspire, that he published it 
— that it was a libel — and that it was published with the purposes 
alleged in the information, you ought unquestionably to find him 



100 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

guilty : if on the other hand, you do not find that all these cir- 
cumstances concurred ; — if you cannot upon your oaths say that 
he published it ; if it be not in your opinion a libel ; — and if he 
did not publish it with the intention alleged ; I say, upon the 
failure of any one of these points, my client is entitled, in justice, 
and upon your oaths, to a verdict of acquittal. 

Gentlemen, Mr. attorney-general has thought proper to direct 
your attention to the state and circumstances of public affairs at 
the time of this transaction ; let me also make a few retrospec- 
tive observations on a period, at which he has but slightly glanced ; 
I speak of the events which took place before the close of the 
American war. 

You know, gentlemen, that France had espoused the cause of 
America, and we became thereby engaged in a war with that 
nation. 

Heu nescia mens hominum futuri ! 

Little did that ill-fated monarch know that he was forming the 
first causes of those disastrous events, that were to end in the 
subversion of his throne, in the slaughter of his family, and the 
deluging of his country with the blood of his people. You cannot 
but remember that, at a time when we had scarcely a regular 
soldier for our defence ; when the old and young were alarmed 
and terrified with apprehensions of descent upon our coasts ; that 
providence seemed to have worked a sort of miracle in our fa- 
vour. You saw a band of armed men come forth at the great 
call of nature, of honour, and their country. You saw men of 
the greatest wealth and rank ; you saw every class of the com- 
munity give up its members, and send them armed into the field, 
to protect the public and private tranquillity of Ireland. It is 
impossible for any man to turn back to that period, without re- 
viving those sentiments of tenderness and gratitude, which then 
beat in the public bosom : to recollect amidst what applause, 
what tears, what prayers, what benedictions, they walked forth 
amongst spectators, agitated by the mingled sensations of terror 
and of reliance, of danger and of protection, imploring the bless- 
ings of heaven upon their heads, and its conquests upon their 
swords. That illustrious, and adored, and abused body of men 
stood forward and assumed the title, which, I trust, the ingrati- 
tude of their country will never blot from its history, " the Vo- 

LiJ\TEERS OF IrELAND." 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 101 

Give me leave now, with great respect, to put this question to 
you : Do you think the assembling of that glorious band of patriots 
was an insurrection ? do you think the invitation to that assembling 
would have been sedition ? they came under no commission but 
the call of their country ; unauthorized and unsanctioned, ex- 
cept by public emergency and public danger. I ask was that 
meeting insurrection or not 1 I put another question : If any 
man then had published a call on that body, and stated that war 
was declared against the state ; that the regular troops were 
withdrawn ; that our coasts were hovered round by the ships of 
the enemy ; that the moment was approaching, when the un- 
protected feebleness of age and sex, when the sanctity of habita- 
tion would be disregarded and profaned by the brutal ferocity of 
a rude invader ; if any man had then said to them, " Leave your 
industry for a while, that you may return to it again, and come 
forth in arms for the public defence." I put the question boldly 
to you. It is not the case of the volunteers of that day ; it is the 
case of my client at this hour, which I put to you. Would that 
call have been then pronounced in a court of justice, or by a jury 
on their oaths, a criminal and seditious invitation to insurrection ? 
If it would not have been so then, upon what principle can it be so 
now ? What is the force and perfection of the law ? It is the 
permanency of the law ; it is, that whenever the fact is the same, 
the law is also the same ; it is, that the law remains a written, 
monumented and recorded letter, to pronounce the same decision, 
upon the same facts whenever they shall arise. I will not affect 
to conceal it : you know there has been an artful, ungrateful, 
and blasphemous clamour raised against these illustrious charac- 
ters, the saviours of the kingdom of Ireland. Having mentioned 
this, let me read a few words of the paper alleged to be criminal : 
" You first took up arms to protect your country from foreign 
enemies, and from domestic disturbance. For the same purposes 
it now becomes necessary that you should resume them." 

I should be the last man in the world to impute any want of 
candour to the right honourable gentleman, who has stated the 
case on behalf of the prosecution : but he has certainly fallen into 
a mistake, which, if not explained, might be highly injurious to 
my client. He supposed that this publication was not addressed 
to those ancient volunteers, but to new combinations of them, 
formed upon new principles, and actuated by different motives. 



102 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

You have the words to which this construction is imputed, upon 
the record; the meaning of his mind can be collected only from 
those words which he has made use of to convey it. The guilt 
imputable to him can only be inferred from the meaning ascriba- 
ble to those words. Let his meaning then be fairly collected by 
resorting to them. Is there a foundation to suppose that this ad- 
dress was addressed to any such body of men, as has been called 
a banditti, (with what justice it is unnecessary to inquire,) and 
not to the old volunteers? 

As to the sneer at the words citizen soldiers, I should feel that I 
was treating a very respected friend with an insidious and un- 
merited unkindness, if I affected to expose it by any gravity of 
refutation. I may, however, be permitted to observe, that those 
who are supposed to have disgraced this expression by adopting it, 
have taken it from the idea of the British constitution, " that no 
man in becoming a soldier ceases to be a citizen." Would to 
God, all enemies as they are, that that unfortunate people had 
borrowed more from that sacred source of liberty and virtue ; and 
would to God, for the sake of humanity, that they had preserved 
even the little they did borrow ! If ever there could be an ob- 
jection to that appellation, it must have been strongest when it 
was first assumed.* To that period the writer manifestly alludes; 
he addresses " those who first took up arms :" " You first took 
up arms to protect your country from foreign enemies and from 
domestic disturbance. For the same purposes it now becomes 
necessary that you should resume them." Is this applicable to 
those who had never taken up arms before 1 "A proclamation," 
says this paper, " has been issued in England for embodying the 
militia, and a proclamation has been issued by the lord lieutenant 
and council of Ireland, for repressing all seditious associations. 
In consequence of both these proclamations, it is reasonable to 
apprehend danger from abroad, and danger at home." God help 
us ! from the situation of Europe at that time, we were threaten- 
ed with too probable danger from abroad, and I am afraid it was 
not without foundation we were told of our having something to 
dread at home. 

I find much abuse has been lavished on the disrespect with 



* In the resolutions and addresses of the old volunteers, at and prior to 1783, the terms 
citizen soldiers, and citizen soldiery, were no uncommon appellations. 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 103 

which the proclamation is treated, in that part of the paper al- 
leged to be a libel. To that my answer for my client is short : 
I do conceive it competent to a British subject, if he thinks that 
a proclamation has issued for the purpose of raising false terrors ; 
I hold it to be not only the privilege, but the duty of a citizen, 
to set his countrymen right, with respect to such misrepresented 
danger ; and until a proclamation in this country shall have the 
force of law, the reason and grounds of it are surely at least 
questionable by the people. Nay, I will go farther, — if an ac- 
tual law had passed, receiving the sanction of the three estates, 
if it be exceptionable in any matter, it is warrantable to any 
man in the community to state, in a becoming manner, his ideas 
upon it. And I should be at a loss to know, if the positive laws 
of Great Britain are thus questionable, upon what ground the 
proclamation of an Irish government should not be open to the 
animadversion of Irish subjects. 

" Whatever be the motive, or from whatever quarter it arises," 
says this paper, "alarm has arisen." Gentlemen, do you not 
know that to be fact? It has been stated by the attorney- 
general, and most truly, that the most gloomy apprehensions were 
entertained by the whole country. " You, volunteers of Ireland, 
are therefore summoned to arms at the instance of government, 
as well as by the responsibility attached to your character, and 
the permanent obhgations of your institution." I am free to 
confess, if any man, assuming the liberties of a British subject to 
question public topics, should, under the mask of that privilege, 
publish a proclamation inviting the profligate and seditious, those 
in want, and those in despair, to rise up in arms to overawe the 
legislature, to rob us of whatever portion of the blessings of a free 
government we possess, I know of no offence involving greater 
enormity. But that, gentlemen, is the question you are to try. 
If my client acted with an honest mind and fair intention, and 
having, as he believed, the authority of government to support 
him in the idea that danger was to be apprehended, did apply to 
that body of so known and so revered character, calling upon 
them by their former honour, the principle of their glorious in- 
stitution, and the great stake they possessed in their country. — 
If he interposed, not upon a fictitious pretext, but a real belief 
of actual and imminent danger, and that their arming at that 
critical moment was necessary to the safety of their country ; 
2N 



104 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

his intention was not only innocent, but highly meritorious. It 
is a question, gentlemen, upon which you only can decide ; it is 
for you to say, whether it was criminal in the defendant to be 
so misled, and whether he is to fall a sacrifice to the prosecution 
of that government by which he was so deceived. I say again, 
gentlemen, you can look only to his words as the interpreter of his 
meaning ; and to the state and circumstances of his country, as he 
was made to believe them, as the clue to his intention. The case 
then, gentlemen, is shortly and simply this : a man of the first fa- 
mily, and fortune, and character, and property among you reads 
a proclamation, stating the country to be in danger from abroad 
and at home ; and thus alarmed — thus upon the authority of the 
prosecutor alarmed, applies to that august body, before whose 
awful presence sedition must vanish and insurrection disappear. 
You must surrender, I hesitate not to say, your oaths to unfound- 
ed assertion, if you can submit to say, that such an act, of such 
a man, so warranted, is a wicked and seditious Ubel. If he was 
a dupe, let me ask you who was the impostor? I blush and I 
shrink with shame and detestation from that meanness of dupery 
and servile complaisance, which could make that dupe a victim 
to the accusation of that impostor. 

You perceive, gentlemen, that I am going into the merits of 
this publication, before I apply myself to the question which is 
first in order of time, namely, whether the publication, in point 
of fact, is to be ascribed to Mr. Rowan or not. I have been un- 
intentionally led into this violation of order. I should effect no 
purpose of either brevity or clearness, by returning to the more 
methodical course of observation. I have been naturally drawn 
from it by the superior importance of the topic I am upon, namely, 
the merit of the publication in question. 

This publication, if ascribed at all to Mr. Rowan, contains four 
distinct subjects : the first, the invitation to the volunteers to arm : 
upon that I have already observed : but those that remain are 
surely of much importance, and no doubt are prosecuted as equally 
criminal. The paper next states the necessity of a reform in 
parliament ; it states, thirdly, the necessity of an emancipation 
of the catholic inhabitants of Ireland ; and as necessary to the 
achievement of all these objects, does, fourthly, state the necessity 
of a general delegated convention of the people. 

It has been alleged that Mr. Rowan intended by this publi- 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 105 

cation to excite the subjects of this country to effect an alteration 
in the form of your constitution. And here, gentlemen, perhaps, 
you may not be unwilling to follow a little farther than Mr. At- 
torney-general has done, the idea of a late prosecution in Great 
Britain upon the subject of a public libel. It is with peculiar 
fondness I look to that country for solid principles of constitu- 
tional liberty and judicial example. You have been pressed in 
no small degree with the manner in which this publication marks 
the different orders of our constitution, and comments upon them. 
Let me show you what boldness of animadversion on such topics, 
is thought justifiable in the British nation, and by a British jury. 
I have in my hand the report of the trial of the printers 
of the Morning Chronicle, for a supposed libel against the state, 
and of their acquittal : let me read to you some passages from 
that publication, which a jury of Englishmen were in vain called 
upon to brand with the name of libel. 

" Claiming it as our indefeasible right to associate together, in 
a peaceable and friendly manner, for the communication of 
thoughts, the formation of opinions, and to promote the gene- 
ral happiness, we think it unnecessary to offer any apology for 
inviting you to join us in this manly and benevolent pursuit; the 
necessity of the inhabitants of every community endeavouring to 
procure a true knowledge of their rights, their duties, and their 
interests, will not be denied, except by those who are the slaves 
of prejudice, or interested in the continuation of abuses. As men 
who wish to aspire to the title of freemen, we totally deny the 
wisdom and the humanity of the advice, to approach the defects 
of government with ' pious awe and trembling solicitude.' What 
better doctrine could the pope or the tyrants of Europe desire ? 
We think, therefore, that the cause of truth and justice can 
never be hurt by temperate and honest discussions; and that 
cause which will not bear such a scrutiny, must be systematically 
or practically bad. We are sensible that those who are not 
friends to the general good have attempted to inflame the public 
mind with the cry of ' Danger,' whenever men have associated 
for discussing the principles of government ; and we have little 
doubt but such conduct will be pursued in this place ; we would 
therefore caution every honest man, who has really the welfare 
of the nation at heart, to avoid being led away by the prostituted 
clamours of those who live on the sources of corruption. We 



106 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

pity the fears of the timorous, and we are totally unconcerned 
respecting the false alarms of the venal. — 

— " We view with concern the frequency of wars. — We are 
persuaded that the interests of the poor can never be pro- 
moted by accession of territory, when bought at the expense of 
their labour and blood ; and we must say, in the language of a 
celebrated author — ' We, who are only the people, but who pay 
for wars with our substance and our blood, will not cease to tell 
kings,' or governments, 'that to them alone wars are profitable; 
that the true and just conquests are those which each makes at 
home, by comforting the peasantry, by promoting agriculture 
and manufactories, by multiplying men and the other productions 
of nature ; that then it is that kings may call themselves the 
image of God, whose will is perpetually directed to the creation 
of new beings. If they continue to make us fight and kill one 
another in uniform, we will continue to write and speak, until 
nations shall be cured of this folly.' — We are certain our present 
heavy burthens are owing, in a great measure, to cruel and im- 
politic wars, and therefore we will do all on our part, as peace- 
able citizens who have the good of the community at heart, to 
enlighten each other, and protest against them. 

" The present state of the representation of the people calls for 
the particular attention of every man who has humanity sufficient 
to feel for the honour and happiness of his country ; to the de- 
fects and corruptions of which, we are inclined to attribute un- 
necessary wars, &c. &c. We think it a deplorable case when 
the poor must support a corruption which is calculated to oppress 
them; when the labourer must give his money to afford the 
means of preventing him having a voice in its disposal ; when the 
lower classes may say — ' We give you our money, for which we 
have toiled and sweat, and which would save our families from 
cold and hunger; but we think it more hard that there is 
nobody whom we have delegated, to see that it is not improperly 
and wickedly spent ; we have none to watch over our interests ; 
the rich only are represented.' — 

" — An equal and uncorrupt representation would, we are 
persuaded, save us from heavy expenses, and deliver us from 
many oppressions ; we will therefore do our duty to procure this 
reform, which appears to us of the utmost importance. 

" In short, we see, with the most lively concern, an army of 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 107 

placemen, pensioners, &c. fighting in the cause of corruption and 
prejudice, and spreading the contagion far and wide. — 

" — We see with equal sensibility the present outcry against 
reforms, and a proclamation (tending to cramp the liberty of the 
press, and discredit the true friends of the people,) receiving the 
support of numbers of our countrymen. — 

" We see burthens multiplied — the lower classes sinking into 
poverty, disgrace, and excesses, and the means of those shocking 
abuses increased for the purposes of revenue. — 

" — We ask ourselves — ' Are we in England V — Have our 
forefathers fought, bled, and conquered for liberty? And did 
they not think that the fruits of their patriotism would be more 
abundant in peace, plenty and happiness ? — 

" — Is the condition of the poor never to be improved ? Great 
Britain must have arrived at the highest degree of national hap- 
piness and prosperity, and our situation must be too good to be 
mended, or the present outcry against reforms and improvements 
is human and criminal. But we hope our condition will be 
speedily improved, and to obtain so desirable a good is the object 
of our present association and union, founded on principles of 
benevolence and humanity ; disclaiming all connexion with riots 
and disorder, but firm in our purpose, and warm in our affections 
for liberty. 

" Lastly, — We invite the friends of freedom throughout Great 
Britain to form similar societies, and to act with unanimity and 
firmness, till the people be too wise to be imposed upon ; and 
their influence in the government be commensurate with their 
dignity and importance : 

" THEN SHALL WE BE FREE AND HAPPY." 

Such, gentlemen, is the language which a subject of Great 
Britain thinks himself warranted to hold, and upon such language 
has the corroborating sanction of a British jury been stamped 
by a verdict of acquittal. Such was the honest and manly free- 
dom of publication, in a country, too, where the complaint of 
abuses has not half the foundation it has here. I said I loved to 
look to England for principles of judicial example ; I cannot but 
say to you, that it depends on your spirit, whether I shall look to 
it hereafter with sympathy or with shame. Be pleased, now, 
gentlemen, to consider whether the statement of the imperfection 



108 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

in your representation has been made with a desire of inflaming 
an attack upon the pubhc tranquillity, or with an honest pur- 
pose of procuring a remedy for an actually existing grievance. 

It is impossible not to revert to the situation of the times ; and 
let me remind you, that whatever observations of this kind I am 
compelled thus to make in a court of justice, the uttering of them 
in this place is not imputable to my client, but to the necessity of 
defence imposed upon him by this extraordinary prosecution. 

Gentlemen, the representation of our people is the vital prin- 
ciple of their political existence ; without it they are dead, or 
they hve only to servitude ; without it there are two estates acting 
upon and against the third, instead of acting in co-operation 
with it ; without it, if the people are oppressed by their judges, 
where is the tribunal to which their judges can be amenable 
without it, if they are trampled upon and plundered by a miniS' 
ter, where is the tribunal to which the offender shall be amena 
ble ? without it, where is the ear to hear, or the heart to feel 
or the hand to redress their sufferings 1 Shall they be found 
let me ask you, in the accursed bands of imps and minions that 
bask in their disgrace, and fatten upon their spoils, and flourish 
upon their ruin 1 But let me not put this to you as a merely 
speculative question. It is a plain question of fact : rely upon it, 
physical man is every where the same ; it is only the various 
operation of moral causes that gives variety to the social or indi- 
vidual character and condition. How otherwise happens it, 
that modern slavery looks quietly at the despot, on the very 
spot where Leonidas expired 1 The answer is, Sparta has not 
changed her climate, but she has lost that government which 
her liberty could not survive. 

I call you, therefore, to the plain question of fact. This paper 
recommends a reform in parliament : I put that question to your 
consciences ; do you think it needs that reform ? I put it boldly 
and fairly to you — do you think the people of Ireland are repre- 
sented as they ought to be ? — Do you hesitate for an answer 'I 
If you do, let me remind you, that until the last year three mil- 
lions of your countrymen have by the express letter of the law 
been excluded from the reality of actual, and even from the 
phantom of virtual representation. Shall we then be told that 
this is only the aflirmation of a wicked and seditious incendiary ? 
If you do not feel the mockery of such a charge, look at your 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 109 

country ; in what state do you find it ? Is it in a state of tran- 
quillity and general satisfaction 1 These are traces by which 
good are ever to be distinguished from bad governments, without 
any very minute inquiry or speculative refinement? — Do you 
feel that a veneration for the law, a pious and humble attachment 
to the constitution, form the political morality of your people 1 
Do you find that comfort and competency among your people, 
which is always to be found where a government is mild and 
moderate ; where taxes are imposed by a body, who have an 
interest in treating the poorer orders with compassion, and pre- 
venting the weight of taxation from pressing sore upon them ? 

Gentlemen, I mean not to impeach the state of your represen- 
tation, I am not saying that it is defective, or that it ought to be 
altered or amended ; nor is this a place for me to say, whether I 
think that three millions of the inhabitants of a country, whose 
whole number is but four, ought to be admitted to any efficient 
situation in the state. It may be said, and truly, that these are 
not questions for either of us directly to decide ; but you cannot 
refuse them some passing consideration at least, when you re- 
member that on this subject the real question for your decision 
is, whether the allegation of a defect in your constitution is so 
utterly unfounded and false, that you can ascribe it only to the 
malice and perverseness of a wicked mind, and not to the inno- 
cent mistake of an ordinary understanding ; — whether it may 
not be mistake ; whether it can be only sedition. 

And here, gentlemen, I own I cannot but regret, that one of 
our countrymen should be criminally pursued for asserting the 
necessity of a reform, at the very moment, when that necessity 
seems admitted by the parliament itself; that this unhappy re- 
form shall at the same moment be a subject of legislative dis- 
cussion, and criminal prosecution. Far am I from imputing any 
sinister design to the virtue or wisdom of our government ; but 
who can avoid feeling the deplorable impression that must be 
made on the public mind, when the demand for that reform is 
answered by a criminal information ! 

I am the more forcibly impressed by this consideration, when 
I consider, that when this information was first put on the file, the 
subject was transiently mentioned in the house of commons. Some 
circumstances retarded the progress of the inquiry there, and the 
progress of the information was equally retarded here. The 



110 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

first day of this session, you all know, that subject was again 
brought forward in the house of commons, and, as if they had 
slept together, this prosecution was also revived in the court of 
king's-bench ; and that before a jury, taken from a panel partly 
composed of those very members of parliament, who, in the house 
of commons, must debate upon this subject as a measure of pub- 
lic advantage, which they are here called upon to consider as a 
public crime.* 

This paper, gentlemen, insists upon the necessity of emanci- 
pating the catholics of Ireland, and that is charged as a part of 
the libel. If they had waited another year, if they had kept this 
prosecution impending for another year, how much would remain 
for a jury to decide upon, I should be at a loss to discover. It 
seems as if the progress of public information was eating away 
the ground of the prosecution. Since the commencement of the 
prosecution, this part of the libel has unluckily received the 
sanction of the legislature. In that interval our catholic brethren 
have obtained that admission, which it seems it was a libel to 
propose ; in what way to account for this, I am really at a loss. 
Have any alarms been occasioned by the emancipation of our ca- 
tholic brethren ? has the bigoted malignity of any individuals 
been crushed ? or has the stabihty of the government, or that of 
the country been weakened ? or is one million of subjects stronger 
than four millions ? Do you think that the benefit they re- 
ceived should be poisoned by the sting of vengeance ? If you 
think so, you must say to them, " you have demanded emanci- 
pation and you have got it ; but we abhor your persons, we are 
outraged at your success, and we will stigmatize, by a criminal 
prosecution, the adviser of that relief which you have obtained 
from the voice of your country." I ask you, do you think, as 
honest men, anxious for the public tranquillity, conscious that 
there are wounds not yet completely cicatrized, that you ought 
to speak this language at this time, to men who are too much 
disposed to think that in this very emancipation they have been 
saved from their own parliament by the humanity of their sove- 
reign ? Or do you wish to prepare them for the revocation of 
these improvident concessions ? Do you think it wise or humane 
at this moment to insult them, by sticking up in a pillory the 

* Amorig the names on the peinel were several members ol parhament. 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. Ill 

man who dared to stand forth as their advocate ? I put it to 
your oaths ; do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a vic- 
tory obtained by justice over bigotry and oppression, should have 
a stigma cast upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men bold 
and honest enough to propose that measure ? to propose the re- 
deeming of religion from the abuses of the church, the reclaiming 
of three millions of men from bondage, and giving liberty to all 
who had a right to demand it ; giving, I say, in the so much cen- 
sured words of this paper, giving " universal EMAPfciPATioN 1" 
I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes hberty com- 
mensurate with and inseparable from British soil ; which pro- 
claims even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets 
his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads 
is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. 
No matter in what language his doom may have been pro- 
nounced ; — no matter what complexion incompatible with free- 
dom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him ; — 
no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been 
cloven down ; — no matter with what solemnities he may have 
been devoted upon the altar of slavery ; the first moment he 
touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink to- 
gether in the dust ; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty ; 
his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from 
around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disen- 
thralled, by the irresistible Genius of universal emancipation. 

[^Here Mr. Curran was interrupted by a sudden burst of applause 
from the court and hall, which was repeated for a considerable length 
of time : silence being at length restored, he proceeded.'] 

Gentlemen, I am not such a fool as to ascribe any effusion of 
this sort to any merits of mine. It is the mighty theme, and not 
the inconsiderable advocate, that can excite interest in the hearer! 
What you hear is but the testimony which nature bears to her 
own character ; it is the effusion of her gratitude to that power, 
which stampt that character upon her. 

And, permit me to say, that if my client had occasion to defend 
his cause by any mad or drunken appeals to extravagance or li- 
centiousness, I trust in God I stand in that situation, that, humble 
as I am, he would not have resorted to me to be his advocate. I 
was not recommended to his choice by any connexion of principle 
or party, or even private friendship ; and saying this, I cannot 
20 



112 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

but add, that I consider not to be acquainted with such a man as Mr. 
Rowan, a want of personal good fortune. But upon this great sub- 
ject of reform and emancipation, there is a latitude and boldness 
of remark, justifiable in the people, and necessary to the defence 
of Mr. Rowan, for which the habits of professional studies, and 
technical adherence to established forms, have rendered me unfit. 
It is, however, my duty, standing here as his advocate, to make 
some few observations to you, which I conceive to be material. 
Gentlemen, you are sitting in a country which has a right to 
the British constitution, and which is bound by an indissoluble 
union with the British nation. If you were now even at liberty 
to debate upon that subject ; if you even were not by the most 
solemn compacts, founded upon the authority of your ancestors 
and of yourselves, bound to that alliance, and had an election 
now to make ; in the present unhappy state of Europe, if you 
had been heretofore a stranger to Great Britain, you would now 
say, we will enter into society and union with you ; 
Una salus ambobus erit, commune pcriculum. 

But to accomplish that union, let me tell you, you must learn 
to become like the English people. It is in vain to say, you will 
protect their freedom, if you abandon your own. The pillar 
whose base has no foundation, can give no support to the dome 
under which its head is placed ; and if you profess to give Eng- 
land that assistance which you refuse to yourselves, she will 
laugh at your folly, and despise your meanness and insincerity. 
Let us follow this a little further : 1 know you will interpret what 
I say with the candour in which it is spoken. England is mark- 
ed by a natural avarice of freedom, which she is studious to en- 
gross and accumulate, but most unwilling to impart ; whether 
from any necessity of her policy, or from her weakness, or from 
her pride, I will not presume to say ; but so is the fact ; you 
need not look to the cast, nor to the west, you need only look to 
yourselves. 

In order to confirm this observation, I would appeal to what 
fell from the learned counsel for the crown, " that notwithstand- 
ing the alliance subsisting for two centuries past between the 
two countries, the date of liberty in one goes no farther back than 
the year 1784." 

If it required additional confirmation, I should state the case 
of the invaded American, and the subjugated Indian, to prove, 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 113 

that the policy of England has ever been to govern her connex- 
ions more as colonies than as allies ; and it must be owing to the 
great spirit indeed of Ireland, if she shall continue free. Rely 
upon it, she will ever have to hold her course against an adverse 
current ; rely upon it, if the popular spring does not continue 
strong and elastic, a short interval of debilitated nerve and bro- 
ken force, will send you down the stream again, and reconsign 
you to the condition of a province. 

If such should become the fate of your constitution, ask your- 
selves what must be the motive of your government ? It is easier 
to govern a province by faction, than to govern a co-ordinate 
country by co-ordinate means. 1 do not say it is now, but it will 
be always thought easiest by the managers of the day, to govern 
the Irish nation by the agency of such a faction, as long as this 
country shall be found willing to let her connexion with Great 
Britain be preserved only by her own degradation. In such a 
precarious and wretched state of things, if it shall ever be found 
to exist, the true friend of Irish liberty, and British connexion, 
will see, that the only means of saving both must be, as Lord 
Chatham expressed it, " the infusion of new health and blood into 
the constitution." He will see how deep a stake each country 
has in the liberty of the other; he will see what a bulwark he 
adds to the common cause, by giving England a co-ordinate, 
and co-interested ally, instead of an oppressed, enfeebled, and 
suspected dependant ; he will see how grossly the credulity of 
Britain is abused, by those who make her believe that her inter- 
est is promoted by our depression ; he will see the desperate 
precipice to which she approaches by such conduct, and with 
an animated and generous piety, he will labour to avert her 
danger. 

But, gentlemen of the jury, what is like to be his fate 1 The 
interest of the sovereign must be for ever the interest of his peo- 
ple ; because his interest lives beyond his life : — it must live in 
his fame, it must live in the tenderness of his solicitude for an un- 
born posterity; — it must live in that heart-attaching bond by 
which millions of men have united the destinies of themselves and 
their children with his, and call him by the endearing appella- 
tion of KING AND FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE. 

But what can be the interest of such a government as I have 
described ? Not the interest of the king, not the interest of the 



114 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

people ; but the sordid interest of the hour ; the interest in de- 
ceiving the one, and in oppressing and defaming the other : the 
interest of unpunished rapine and unmerited favour : that odious 
and abject interest, that prompts them to extinguish public spirit 
in punishment or in bribe, and to pursue every man, even to 
death, who has sense to see, and integrity and firmness enough 
to abhor and to oppose them. What, therefore, I say, will be 
the fate of the man, who embarks in an enterprise of so much 
difficulty and danger ? I will not answer it. — Upon that hazard 
has my client put every thing that can be dear to man ,-• his 
fame, his fortune, his person, his liberty, and his children ; but 
with what event, your verdict only can answer ; and to that I 
refer your country. 

There is a fourth point remaining. Says this paper, " For both 
these purposes, it appears necessary, that provincial conventions 
should assemble, preparatory to the convention of the protestant 
people. The delegates of the catholic body are not justified in 
communicating with individuals, or even bodies of inferior au- 
thority, and therefore an assembly of a similar nature and or- 
ganization is necessary to establish an intercourse of sentiment, 
an uniformity of conduct, an united cause, and an united nation. 
If a convention on the one part does not soon follow, and is not 
soon connected with that on the other, the common cause will 
split into the partial interest ; the people will relax into inatten- 
tention and inertness, the union of affection and exertion will dis- 
solve, and too probably some local insurrection, instigated by the 
mahgnity of our common enemy, may commit the character, 
and risque the tranquillity of the island ; which can be obviated 
only by the influence of an assembly arising from, and assimilated 
with, the people, and whose spirit may be, as it were, knit with 
the soul of the nation : unless the sense of the protestant people be 
on their part as fairly collected, and as judiciously directed, un- 
less individual exertion consolidates into collective strength, xmless 
the particles unite into one mass, we may perhaps serve some 
person or some party for a little, but the public not at all : the 
nation is neither insolent, nor rebellious, nor seditious ; while it 
knows its rights, it is unwilling to manifest its powers ; it would 
rather supplicate administration to anticipate revolution by well 
timed reform, and to save their country in mercy to themselves." 

Gentlemen, it is with something more than common reverence. 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 115 

it is with a species of terror, that I am obliged to tread this 
ground, — But what is the idea, put in the strongest point of view 1 
— We are wilhng not to manifest our powers, but to supphcate 
administration, to anticipate revolution, that the legislature may 
save the country in mercy to itself 

Let me suggest to you, gentlemen, that there are some cir- 
cumstances, which have happened in the history of this country, 
that may better serve as a comment upon this part of the case 
than any I can make. I am not bound to defend Mr. Rowan as 
to the truth or wisdom of the opinions he may have formed. But 
if he did really conceive the situation of the country such, as that 
the not redressing her grievances might lead to a convulsion, and 
of such an opinion not even Mr. Rowan is answerable here for 
the wisdom, much less shall I insinuate any idea of my own upon 
so awful a subject ; but if he did so conceive the fact to be, and 
acted from the fair and honest suggestion of a mind anxious for 
the public good, I must confess, gentlemen, I do not know in 
what part of the British constitution to find the principle of his 
criminality. 

But, be pleased further to consider, that he cannot be under- 
stood to put the fact on which he argues, on the authority of his 
assertion. The condition of Ireland was as open to the observa- 
tion of every other man, as to that of Mr. Rowan ; what then 
does this part of the publication amount to ? In my mind, sim- 
ply to this : The nature of oppression in all countries is such, that, 
although it may be borne to a certain degree, it cannot be borne 
beyond that degree. You find that exemplified in Great Britain ; 
you find the people of England patient to a certain point, but 
patient no longer. That infatuated monarch, James II., ex- 
perienced this. The time did come, when the measure of popu- 
lar sufferings and popular patience was full ; when a single drop 
was sufficient to make the waters of bitterness to overflow. I 
think this measure in Ireland is brimful at present ; I think the 
state of the representation of the people in parliament is a griev- 
ance ; I think the utter exclusion of three millions of people is a 
grievance of that kind that the people are not likely long to en- 
dure, and the continuation of which may plunge the country into 
that state of despair, which wrongs, exasperated by perseverance, 
never fail to produce. But to whom is even this language ad- 
dressed ? Not to the body of the people, on whose temper and 



116 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

moderation, if once excited, perhaps not much confidence could 
be placed ; but to that authoritative body, whose influence and 
power would have restrained the excesses of the irritable and 
tumultuous ; and for that purpose expressly does this publication 
address the volunteers. We are told that we are in danger ; — 
I call upon you, the great constitutional saviours of Ireland, to 
defend the country to which you have given political existence, 
and to use whatever sanction your great name, your sacred cha- 
racter, and the weight you have in the community, must give you 
to repress wicked designs, if any there are. We feel ourselves 
strong. The people are always strong ; the public chains can 
only be rivetted by the public hands. Look to those devoted re- 
gions of southern despotism ; behold the expiring victim on his 
knees, presenting the javelin reeking with his blood to the fero- 
cious monster who returns it into his heart. Call not that mon- 
ster the tyrant : he is no more than the executioner of that 
inhuman tyranny, which the people practise upon themselves, 
and of which he is only reserved to be a later victim than the 
wretch he has sent before. Look to a nearer country, where 
the sanguinary characters are more legible ; whence you almost 
hear the groans of death and torture. Do you ascribe the ra- 
pine and murder in France to the few names that we are execra- 
ting here ? or do you not see that it is the phrenzy of an infuriated 
multitude abusing its own strength, and practising those hideous 
abominations upon itself. Against the violence of this strength, 
let your virtue and influence be our safeguard. 

What criminality, gentlemen of the jury, can you find in this ? 
what at any time 1 but I ask you, peculiarly at this momentous 
period, what guilt can you find in it 1 My client saw the scene 
of horror and blood which covers almost the face of Europe : he 
feared that causes, which he thought similar, might produce simi- 
lar effects, and he seeks to avert those dangers by calling the 
united virtue and tried moderation of the country into a state 
of strength and vigilance. Yet this is the conduct which the 
prosecution of this day seeks to punish and stigmatize ; and this 
is the language for which this paper is reprobated to-day, as 
tending to turn the hearts of the people against their sovereign, 
and inviting them to overturn the constitution. 

Let us now, gentlemen, consider the concluding part of this 
publication. It recommends a meeting of the people to deliberate 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 117 

on constitutional methods of redressing grievances. Upon this 
subject I am incHned to suspect that I have in my youth taken 
up crude ideas, not founded, perhaps, in law ; but I did imagine, 
that when the bill of rights restored the right of petitioning for 
the redi-ess of grievances, it was understood that the people might 
boldly state among themselves that grievances did exist ; I did 
imagine it was understood that the people might lawfully assem- 
ble themselves in such manner as they might deem most orderly 
and decorous. I thought I had collected it from the greatest lu- 
minaries of the law. The power of petitioning seemed to me to 
imply the right of assembling for the purpose of deliberation. 
The law requiring a petition to be presented by a limited num- 
ber, seemed to me to admit that the petition might be prepared 
by any number whatever, provided, in doing so, they did not 
commit any breach or violation of the public peace. I know 
that there has been a law passed in the Irish parliament of last 
year, which may bring my former opinion into a merited want 
of authority. The law declares that no body of men may dele- 
gate a power to any smaller number, to act, think, or petition 
for them. If that law had not passed I should have thought that 
the assembling by a delegate convention was recommended, in 
order to avoid the tumult and disorder of a promiscuous assembly 
of the whole mass of the people. I should have conceived before 
that act, that any law to abridge the orderly appointment of the 
few to consult for the interest of the many, and thus force the 
many to consult by themselves, or not at all, would in fact be a 
law not to restrain but to promote insurrection. But that law 
has spoken, and my error must stand corrected. 

Of this, however, let me remind you, you are to try this 
part of the publication by what the law was then, not by what 
it is now. How was it understood until last session of parliament ? 
You had both in England and Ireland, for the last ten years, 
these delegated meetings. The volunteers of Ireland, in 1783, 
met by delegation ; they framed a plan of parliamentary reform ; 
they presented it to the representative wisdom of the nation ; it 
was not received ; but no man ever dreamed that it was not the 
undoubted right of the subject to assemble in that manner. They 
assembled by delegation at Dungannon, and to show the idea 
then entertained of the legality of their public conduct, that same 
body of volunteers was thanked by both houses of parliament, 



118 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

and their delegates most graciously received at the throne. The 
other day, you had delegated representatives of the catholics 
of Ireland, publicly elected by the members of that persuasion, 
and sitting in convention in the heart of your capital, carrying 
on an actual treaty with the existing government, and under the 
eye of your own parliament, which was then assembled ; you 
have seen the delegates from that convention carry the complaints 
of their grievances to the foot of the throne ; from whence they 
brought back to that convention the auspicious tidings of that 
redress which they had been refused at home. 

Such, gentlemen, have been the means of popular communi- 
cation and discussion, which until the last session have been 
deemed legal in this country ; as happily for the sister kingdom, 
they are yet considered there. 

I do not complain of this act as any infraction of popular li- 
berty; I should not think it becoming in me to express any com- 
plaint against a law, when once become such. I observe only, 
that one mode of popular deliberation is thereby taken utterly 
away, and you are reduced to a situation in which you never 
stood before. You are living in a country, where the constitution 
is rightly stated to be only ten years old ; where the people have 
not the ordinary rudiments of education. It is a melancholy 
story, that the lower orders of the people here have less means 
of being enlightened than the same class of people in any other 
country. If there be no means left by which public measures 
can be canvassed, what will be the consequence 1 Where the 
press is free, and discussion unrestrained, the mind, by the colli- 
sion of intercourse, gets rid of its own asperities, a sort of insensi- 
ble perspiration takes place in the body politic, by which those 
acrimonies, which would otherwise fester and inflame, are quietly 
dissolved and dissipated. But now, if any aggregate assembly 
shall meet, they are censured ; if a printer publishes their reso- 
lutions, he is punished. Rightly to be sure in both cases, for it 
has been lately done. If the people say, let us not create tumult, 
but meet in delegation, they cannot do it ; if they are anxious to 
promote parliamentary reform in that way, they cannot do it ; 
the law of the last session has for the first time declared such 
meetings to be a crime. What then remains? The liberty of 
the press only; that sacred palladium, which no influence, no 
power, no minister, no government, which nothing but the de- 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 119 

pravity, or folly, or corruption of a jury, can ever destroy. — And 
what calamities are the people saved from by having pubUc 
communication left open to them ? I will tell you, gentlemen, 
what they are saved from, and what the government is saved 
from ! I will tell you also to what both are exposed by shutting 
up that communication. In one case sedition speaks aloud, and 
walks abroad ; the demagogue goes forth ; the public eye is upon 
him ; he frets his busy hour upon the stage ; but soon either 
weariness, or bribe, or punishment, or disappointment bear him 
down, or drive him off, and he appears no more. In the other 
case, how does the work of sedition go forward 1 Night after 
night the muffled rebel steals forth in the dark, and casts another 
and another brand upon the pile, to which, when the hour of fa- 
tal maturity shall arrive, he will apply the flame. If you doubt 
of the horrid consequences of suppressing the effusion even of in- 
dividual discontent, look to those enslaved countries where the 
protection of despotism is supposed to be secured by such restraints. 
Even the person of the despot there is never in safety. Neither 
the fears of the despot, nor the machinations of the slave have 
any slumber, the one anticipating the moment of peril, the other 
watching the opportunity of aggression. The fatal crisis is 
equally a surprise upon both ; the decisive instant is precipitated 
without warning by folly on the one side, or by phrensy on the 
other, and there is no notice of the treason till the traitor acts. 
In those unfortunate countries (one cannot read it without horror) 
there are officers, whose province it is, to have the water, which 
is to be drunk by their rulers, sealed up in bottles, lest some 
wretched miscreant should throw poison into the draught. 

But, gentlemen, if you wish for a nearer and more interesting 
example, you have it in the history of your own revolution ; you 
have it at that memorable period, when the monarch found a 
servile acquiescence in the ministers of his folly ; when the liberty 
of the press was trodden under foot ; when venal sheriffs return- 
ed packed juries to carry into effect those fatal conspiracies of 
the few against the many ; when the devoted benches of public 
justice were filled by some of those foundlings of fortune, who, 
overwhelmed in the torrent of corruption at an early period, lay 
at the bottom like drowned bodies, while soundness or sanity 
remained in them ; but at length, becoming buoyant by putre- 
faction, they rose as they rotted, and floated to the surface of 
2P 



120 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

the polluted stream, where they were drifted along, the object 
of terror, and contagion, and abomination. 

In that awful moment of a nation's travail, of the last gasp 
of tyranny, and the first breath of freedom, how pregnant is the 
example 1 The press extinguished, the people enslaved, and the 
prince undone. As the advocate of society, therefore, of peace, 
of domestic liberty, and the lasting union of the two countries, I 
conjure you to guard the liberty of the press, that great centinel 
of the state, that grand detector of public imposture: guard it, 
because, when it sinks, there sinks with it, in one common grave, 
the liberty of the subject, and the security of the crown. 

Gentlemen, I am glad that this question has not been brought 
forward earlier ; I rejoice for the sake of the court, of the jury, 
and of the public repose, that this question has not been brought 
forward till now. In Great Britain analagous circumstances 
have taken place. At the commencement of that unfortunate 
war which has deluged Europe with blood, the spirit of the Eng- 
lish people was tremblingly alive to the terror of French princi- 
ples; at that moment of general paroxysm, to accuse was to 
convict. The danger looked larger to the public eye, from the 
misty region through which it was surveyed. We measure in- 
accessible heights by the shadows which they project, where the 
lowncss and the distance of the light form the length of the 
shade. 

There is a sort of aspiring and adventurous credulity, which 
disdains assenting to obvious truths, and delights in catching at 
the improbability of circumstances, as its best ground of faith. 
To what other cause, gentlemen, can you ascribe that in the 
wise, the reflecting, and the philosophic nation of Great Britain, 
a printer has been gravely found guilty of a libel, for publishing 
those resolutions to which the present minister of that kingdom 
had actually subscribed his name 1 To what other cause can you 
ascribe, what in my mind is still more astonishing, in such a coun- 
try as Scotland — a nation cast in the happy medium between the 
spiritless acquiescence of submissive poverty, and the sturdy cre- 
dulity of pampered wealth ; cool and ardent ; adventurous and 
persevering ; winging her eagle flight against the blaze of every 
science, with an eye that never winks, and a wing that never 
tires ; crowned as she is with the spoils of every art, and decked 
with the wreath of every muse, from the deep and scrutinizing 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 121 

researches of her Hume, to the sweet and simple, but not less 
sublime and pathetic morality of her Burns — how, from the 
bosom of a country like that, genius, and character, and talents, 
should be banished to a distant barbarous soil ;* condemned to 
pine under the horrid communion of vulgar vice and base-born 
profligacy, for twice the period that ordinary calculation gives 
to the continuance of human life 'i 

But 1 will not further press any idea that is painful to me, 
and I am sure must be painful to you : I will only say, you have 
now an example, of which neither England nor Scotland had the 
advantage ; you have the example of the panic, the infatuation, 
and the contrition of both. It is now for you to decide, whether 
you will profit by their experience of idle panic and idle regret, 
or whether you meanly prefer to palliate a servile imitation of 
their frailty, by a paltry affectation of their repentance. It is 
now for you to show, that you are not carried away by the same 
hectic delusions to acts, of which no tears can wash away the 
fatal consequences, or the indelible reproach. 

Gentlemen, I have been warning you by instances of public 
intellect suspended or obscured ; let me rather excite you by the 
example of that intellect recovered and restored. In that case 
which Mr. Attorney-general has cited himself, I mean that of the 
trial of Lambert in England, is there a topic of invective against 
constituted authorities ; is there a topic of abuse against every 
department of British government, that you do not find in the 
most glowing and unqualified terms in that publication, for 
which the printer of it was prosecuted, and acquitted by an 
English jury ? See, too, what a difference there is between the 
case of a man publishing his own opinion of facts, thinking that 
he is bound by duty to hazard the promulgation of them, and 
without the remotest hope of any personal advantage, and that 
of a man who makes publication his trade, And saying this, let 
me not be misunderstood. It is not my province to enter into 
any abstract defence of the opinions of any man upon public 
subjects. I do not affirmatively state to you that these grievances, 
which this paper supposes, do in fact exist : yet I cannot but say, 
that the movers of this prosecution have forced this question 
upon you. Their motives and their merits, like those of all ac- 

* Mr. Curran alludes to the sentence of transportation passed in Scotland upon 
Mr. Muir, &c. &c. 

9 



122 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

ciiser?, are put in issue before you ; and 1 need not tell you how 
strongly the motive and merits of any informer ought to in- 
fluence the fate of his accusation. 

I agree most implicitly with Mr. Attorney-general, that nothing 
can be more criminal than an attempt to work a change in the 
government by armed force : and I entreat that the court will not 
suffer any expression of mine to be considered as giving encour- 
agement or defence to any design to excite disaffection, to over- 
awe or to overturn the government. But I put my client's case 
upon another ground : — if he was led into an opinion of grievances, 
where there were none ; if he thought there ought to be a reform 
where none was necessary, he is answerable only for his inten- 
tion. He can be answerable to you in the same way only that 
he is answerable to that God, before whom the accuser, the ac- 
cused, and the judge must appear together ; that is, not for the 
clearness of his understanding, but for the purity of his heart. 

Gentlemen, Mr. Attorney-general has said, that Mr. Rowan 
did by this publication (supposing it to be his) recommend, under 
the name of equality, a general, indiscriminate assumption of 
public rule by every the meanest person in the state. Low as 
we are m point of public information, there is not, I believe, any 
man, who thinks for a moment, that does not know, that all 
which the great body of the people, of any country, can have 
from any government, is a fair encouragement to their industry, 
and protection for the fruits of their labour. And there is scarcely 
any man, I believe, who does not know, that if a people could 
become so silly as to abandon their stations in society, under pre- 
tence of governing themselves, they would become the dupes and 
the victims of their own folly. But does this publication recom- 
mend any such infatuated abandonment, or any such desperate 
assumption? I will read the words which relate to that subject; 
"By liberty, we never understood unlimited freedom; nor by 
equality, the levelling of property, or the destruction of subordina- 
tion." I ask you, with what justice, upon what principle of 
common sense, you can charge a man with the publication of 
sentiments, the very reverse of what his words avow ? and that, 
when there is no collateral evidence, where there is no founda- 
tion whatever, save those very words, by which his meaning can 
be ascertained ? or if you adopt an arbitrary principle of imput- 
ing to hin) your meaning instead of his own, what publication can 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 123 

be guiltless or safe ? It is a sort of accusation that I am ashamed 
and sorry to see introduced in a court acting on the principles of 
the British constitution. 

In the bitterness of reproach it was said, " Out of thine own 
mouth will I condemn thee ;" from the severity of justice I de- 
mand no more. See if in the words that have been spoken, you 
can find matter to acquit, or to condemn : " By liberty, we never 
understood unlimited freedom ; nor by equality, the levelling of 
property, or the destruction of subordination. — This is a calumny 
invented by that faction, or that gang, which misrepresents the 
king to the people, and the people to the king, traduces one half 
of the nation to cajole the other, and, by keeping up distrust and 
division, wish to continue the proud arbitrators of the fortune 
and fate of Ireland." Here you find that meaning disclaimed 
as a calumny, which is artfully imputed as a crime. 

1 say, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, as to the four parts into 
which the publication must be divided, I answer thus. It calls 
upon the volunteers. Consider the time, the danger, the authori- 
ty of the prosecutors themselves, for believing that danger to 
exist ; the high character, the known moderation, the approved 
loyalty of that venerable institution ; the similarity of the circum- 
stances between the period at which they were summoned to take 
arms, and that in which they had been called upon to reassume 
them. Upon this simple ground, gentlemen, you will decide, whe- 
ther this part of the publication was libellous and criminal, or not. 

As to reform, I could wish to have said nothing upon it : I be- 
lieve I have said enough : if Mr. Rowan, in disclosing that opinion, 
thought the state required it, he acted like an honest man. For 
the rectitude of the opinion he was not answerable ; he dis- 
charged his duty in telling the country that he thought so. 

As to the emancipation of the catholics, I cannot but say that 
Mr. Attorney-general did very wisely in keeping clear of that 
subject. Yet, gentlemen, I need not tell you how important a 
figure it was intended to make upon the scene ; though, from un- 
lucky accidents, it has become necessary to expunge it during 
the rehearsal.* 

Of the concluding part of this publication, the convention 
which it recommends, I have spoken already. I wish not to 

* Between the period of the publication and prosecution, the legislature had, by the 
recommendation of the crown, removed the principal grievances of the catholic code. 



124 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

trouble you with saying more upon it. I feel that I have already- 
trespassed much upon your patience. In truth, upon a subject 
embracing such a variety of topics, a rigid observance either of 
conciseness or arrangement, could perhaps scarcely be expected. 
It is, however, with pleasure I feel lam drawing to a close, and that 
only one question remains, to which I would beg your attention. 
Whatever, gentlemen, may be your opinion of the meaning of 
this publication, there yet remains a great point for you to de- 
cide upon ; namely, whether, in point of fact, this publication be 
imputable to Mr. Rowan, or not 1 whether he did publish it, or 
not ? Two witnesses are called to that fact : one of the name 
of Lyster, and the other of the name of Morton. You must have 
observed that Morton gave no evidence upon which that paper 
could have even been read ; he produced no paper, he identified 
no paper ; he said that he got some paper, but that he had given 
it away. So that, in point of law, there was no evidence given 
by him, on which it could have gone to a jury ; and therefore, it 
turns entirely upon the evidence of the other witness. He has 
stated that he went to a public meeting, in a place where there 
was a gallery crowded with spectators ; and that he there got a 
printed paper, the same which has been read to you. I know 
you are well acquainted with the fact, that the credit of every 
witness must be considered by, and rest with, the jury. They are 
the sovereign judges of that, and I will not insult your feelings, 
by insisting on the caution with which you should watch the tes- 
timony of a witness that seeks to affect the liberty, or property, 
or character of your fellow citizens. Under what circumstances 
does this evidence come before you'? The witness says, he has 
got a commission in the army, by the interest of a lady, from a 
person then high in administration. He told you that he made 
a memorandum upon the back of that paper, it being his general 
custom, when he got such papers, to make an indorsement upon 
them ; that he did this from mere fancy ; that he had no inten- 
tion of giving any evidence on the subject ; he " took it with no 
such view." There is something whimsical enough in this curious 
story. Put his credit upon the positive evidence adduced to his 
character. Who he is I know not ; I know not the man, but his 
credit is impeached. Mr. Blake was called ; he said he knew 
him. I asked him. Do you think, sir, that Mr. Lyster is, or is not 
a man deserving credit upon his oath? — If you find a verdict of 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 125 

conviction, it can be only upon the credit of Mr. Lyster. What 
said Mr. Blake 1 Did he tell you that he considered him a man 
to be believed upon his oath ? He did not attempt to say that 
he did. The best he could say was, that he " would hesitate." 
Do you believe Blake ? Have you the same opinion of Lyster's 
testimony that Mr. Blake has 1 Do you know Lyster ? If you do 
know him, and know that he is credible, your knowledge should 
not be shaken by the doubts of any man. But if you do not know 
him, you must take his credit from an unimpeached witness, 
swearing that he would hesitate to believe him. In my mind, 
there is a circumstance of the strongest nature, that came out 
from Lyster, on the table. I am aware that a most respectable 
man, if impeached by surprise, may not be prepared to repel a 
wanton calumny by contrary testimony : but was Lyster unap- 
prised of this attack upon him ? What said he ? " I knew that 
you had Blake to examine against me ; you have brought him 
here for that purpose." He knew the very witness that was to 
be produced against him ; he knew that his credit was impeach- 
ed, and yet he produced no person to support that credit. — What 
said Mr. Smyth ? " From my knowledge of him, I would not be- 
lieve him upon his oath." 

But what said Mrs. Hatchwell 1 Was the production of that 
witness a surprise upon Mr. Lyster ? Her cross examination shows 
the fact to be the contrary. The learned counsel, you see, was 
perfectly apprised of a chain of private circumstances, to which 
he pointed his questions ; this lady's daughter was married to the 
elder brother of the witness Lyster. Did he know these circum- 
stances by inspiration 1 no ; they could come only from Lyster 
himself I insist, therefore, that the gentleman knew his charac- 
ter was to be impeached, his counsel knew it, and not a single 
witness has been produced to support it. Then consider, gentle- 
men, upon what ground can you find a verdict of conviction 
against my client, when the only witness produced to the fact of 
publication is impeached, without even an attempt to defend his 
character. Many hundreds, he said, were at that meeting. Why 
not produce one of them to swear to the fact of such a meeting ? 
One he has ventured to name, but he was certainly very safe in 
naming a person, who he has told you is not in the kingdom, and 
could not therefore be called to confront him. 

Gentlemen, let me suggest another observation or two, if still 



126 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

you have any doubt as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant. 
Give me leave to suggest to you, what circumstances you ought 
to consider, in order to found your verdict. You should consider 
the character of the person accused ; and in this your task is 
easy. I will venture to say, there is not a man in this nation 
more known than the gentleman who is the subject of this prose- 
cution, not only by the part he has taken in public concerns, and 
which he has taken in common with many ; but still more so, by 
that extraordinary sympathy for human affliction, which, I am 
sorry to think, he shares with so small a number. There is not 
a day that you hear the cries of your starving manufacturers in 
your streets, that you do not also see the advocate of their suffer- 
ings — that you do not see his honest and manly figure, with un- 
covered head, soliciting for their relief; searching the frozen 
heart of charity, for every string that can be touched by com- 
passion, and urging the force of every argument and every mo- 
tive, save that which his modesty suppresses — the authority of his 
own generous example. Or if you see him not there, you may 
trace his steps to the private abode of disease, and famine, and 
despair ; the messenger of heaven, bringing with him food, and 
medicine, and consolation. Are these the materials of which you 
suppose anarchy, and public rapine to be formed ? Is this the 
man, on whom to fasten the abominable charge of goading on a 
frantic populace to mutiny and bloodshed ? Is this the man likely 
to apostatize from every principle that can bind him to the state ; 
his birth, his property, his education, his character, and his chil- 
dren 1 Let me tell you, gentlemen of the jury, if you agree with 
his prosecutors, in thinking that there ought to be a sacrifice of 
such a man, on such an occasion, and upon the credit of such 
evidence, you are to convict him — never did you, never can you 
give a sentence, consigning any man to public punishment with 
less danger to his person or to his fame : for where could the 
hireling be found to fling contumely or ingratitude at his head, 
whose private distresses he had not laboured to alleviate, or 
whose public condition he had not laboured to improve ? 

I cannot, however, avoid adverting to a circumstance that dis- 
tinguishes the case of Mr. Rowan from that of the late sacrifice 
in a neighbouring kingdom.* 

+ Scotland, from whence Mr. Muir, Palmer, and others were transported for se- 
dition. 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 127 

The severer law of that country, it seems, and happy for 
them that it should, enables them to remove from their sight the 
victim of their infatuation. The more merciful spirit of our law 
deprives you of that consolation ; his sufferings must remain for 
ever before your eyes, a continual call upon your shame and 
your remorse. But those sufferings will do more ; they will not 
rest satisfied with your unavailing contrition ; they will challenge 
the great and paramount inquest of society : the man will be 
weighed against the charge, the witness, and the sentence ; and 
impartial justice will demand, Why has an Irish jury done this 
deed ? The moment he ceases to be regarded as a criminal, he 
becomes of necessity an accuser : and let me ask you, what can 
your most zealous defenders be prepared to answer to such a 
charge 1 When your sentence shall have sent him forth to that 
stage, which guilt alone can render infamous, let me tell you, he 
will not be like a little statue upon a mighty pedestal, diminish- 
ing by elevation ; but he will stand a striking and imposing object 
upon a monument, which, if it does not (and it cannot) record 
the atrocity of his crime, must record the atrocity of his convic- 
tion. Upon this subject, therefore, credit me when I say, that I 
am still more anxious for you, than I can possibly be for him. I 
cannot but feel the peculiarity of your situation. Not the jury 
of his own choice, which the law of England allows, but which 
ours refuses ; collected in that box by a person certainly no friend 
to Mr. Rowan, certainly not very deeply interested in giving him 
a very impartial jury. Feeling this, as I am persuaded you do, 
you cannot be surprized, however you may be distressed, at the 
mournful presage, with which an anxious public is led to fear 
the worst from your possible determination. But I will not, for 
the justice and honour of our common country, suffer my mind 
to be borne away by such melancholy anticipation. I will not 
relinquish the confidence that this day will be the period of his 
sufferings ; and, however mercilessly he has been hitherto pur- 
sued, that your verdict will send him home to the arms of his 
family, and the wishes of his country. But if, which heaven for- 
bid, it hath still been unfortunately determined, that because he 
has not bent to power and authority, because he would not bow 
down before the golden calf and worship it, he is to be bound 
and cast into the furnace ; I do trust in God, that there is a re- 
deeming spirit in the constitution, which will be seen to walk 
2Q 



128 8PEECH IN BEHALF OF 

with the sufferer through the flames, and to preserve him unhurt 
by the conflagration. 

\^Upon the conclusion of this speech, Mr. Curran was again, for 
many minutes, loudly applauded by the auditors ; and upon leaving 
the court, was drawn home by the populace, ivho took the horses from 
his caii'iage.^ 

COURT OF KING'S BENCH, 
Tuesday, February 4th, 1794. 

The Recorder applied to set aside the verdict given in the 
case of Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Esq. His application vv^as 
grounded upon diflferent affidavits sworn in court, charging, 1st. 
One of the jurors with a declaration against Mr. Roman, previous 
to trial. — 2dly. Partiality in one of the high sheriffs. — 3rdly. 
That John Lyster, the principal evidence, teas not to be believed 
upon his oath, he, as the affidavits stated, having been guilty of per- 
jury. — And 4thly, the learned gentleman rested his case upon the 
misdirection of the court. He was followed on the same side by 
Mr. Curran, who said : 

It was an early idea, that a verdict in a criminal case could 
not be set aside inconsulto rege; but the law had stood otherwise, 
without a doubt to impeach its principle, for the last two reigns. 

Common sense would say, that the discretion of the court 
should go at least as far in criminal as in civil cases ; and very 
often to go no further, would be to stop far short of what was 
right ; as in those great questions where the prosecution may be 
considered either as an attempt to extinguish liberty, or as a ne- 
cessary measure for the purpose of repressing the virulence of 
public licentiousness and dangerous faction ; where there can be 
no alternative between guilt or martyrdom, where the party 
prosecuted must either be considered as a culprit sinking beneath 
the punishment of his own crimes, or a victim sacrificed to the 
vices of others. But when it clearly appears that the party has 
fallen a prey to persecuting combination, there remains but one 
melancholy question, how far did that combination reach? 

There have been two cases lately decided in this very court, 
the king and Pentland, where the motion was made and refused, 
and the king and Bowen, where it was granted ; both of which 
show, that ceiptious sophistry, and technical pedantry, had here, 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 129 

as well as in England, given way to liberal and rational inquiry: 
and that the court would not now, in their discretion, refuse a 
motion of this kind, unless they could, at the same time, lay 
their hands upon their hearts, and say, they believed in their 
consciences that justice had been done : such was the manly lan- 
guage of one of their lordships, (Mr. justice Downes ;) and such 
the opinion of the court on a former occasion. 

He then cited 7 modern 57. as referred to in Bacon tit. Trial, 
to show, that where there was good ground of challenge to a juror, 
not known at the trial, it was sufficient cause for setting aside the 
verdict. 

In England they have a particular act of parliament, entitling 
the party to strike a special jury to try the fact, and then he has 
time between the striking and the trial, to question the propriety 
of that jury : here my client had no previous information, till the 
instant of trial, who his jurors were to be. 

There are certain indulgences granted at times, perhaps by 
the connivance of humanity, which men, who are not entitled to 
demand them in an open court, obtain nevertheless by sidelong 
means ; and perhaps the little breach which affords that light to 
the mind of the man accused, is a circumstance which the court 
would feel pain, even if called upon, to say, should in all cases 
be prevented : but to overturn principles and authorities, for 
the purpose of oppressing the subject, is what this court will 
never do. 

The first of the affidavits I shall consider, is that of the tra- 
verser. I do not recollect whether it states the sheriff, in avow- 
ed terms, to be an emissary or a hireling agent of the castle, 
therefore do not state it from the affidavit : but he swears, that 
he does believe that he did labour to bring into the box a jury 
full of prejudices, and of the blackest impressions ; instead of 
having, as they ought, fair and impartial minds, and souls like 
white paper. 

This sheriff now stands in court ; he might have denied it if he 
would ; he had an opportunity of answering it ; but he has cer- 
tainly left it an undenied assertion. — He was not certainly obliged 
to answer it, for no man is bound to convict himself But there 
is a part of that charge which amounts at least to this, " Your 
heart was poisoned against me, and you collected those to be my 
judges, who, if they could not be under the dominion of bad dis- 



130 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

positions, might be at least the dupes of good." The most favour- 
able thing that can be said is this, You sought to bring against 
me honest prejudices, but you brought against me wicked ones. 
The very general charge, that he sought for persons who he 
knew were most likely to bring prejudices with them into the 
jury box, is a part of the affidavit that it was incumbent on him 
to answer if he could. 

I do not contend, that what is charged in the affidavit would 
have been a ground of principal challenge to the array ; but 
hold it to be the better opinion, that a challenge to the array 
for favour, does well lie in the mouth of the defendant. 

The incient notion was, you shall not challenge the array for 
favour where the king is a party ; the king only can challenge 
for favour ; for the principle was that every man ought to be fa- 
vourable to the crown ; but, thank God, the advancement of le- 
gal knowledge, and the growing understanding of the age, have 
dissipated such illiberal and mischievous conceptions. 

But I am putting too much stress upon such technical, dis- 
carded, and antiquated scruples. The true question has been 
already stated from the authority of Mr. JusticeDownes,andthat 
question is. Has justice been done ? 

It is a matter upon which scarce any understanding would 
condescend to hesitate, whether a man had been fairly tried, 
whose triers had been collected together by an avowed enemy, 
whose conduct had been such, as to leave no doubt that he had 
purposely brought prejudiced men into the box. 

In every country, where freedom obtains, there must subsist 
parties. In this country and Great Britain, I trust there never 
will be a time when there shall not be men found zealous for the 
actual government of the day. So, on the other hand, I trust, 
there will never be a time, when there will not be found men 
zealous and enthusiastic in the cause of popular freedom and of 
the public rights. If, therefore, a person in public office suffers 
his own prejudices, however honestly anxious he may be for a 
prosecution carried on by those to whom he is attached, to influ- 
ence him so far as to choose men, to his knowledge, devoted to 
principles he espouses, it is an error which a high court of 
judicature, seeking to do right justice, will not fail to correct. 

A sheriff, in such a case, might not have perceived the par- 
tiality of his conduct, because he was surveying through the me- 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 131 

dium of prejudice and habitual corruption : but it is impossible to 
think that this sheriff meant to be impartial ; it is an interpreta- 
tion more favourable than his conduct will allow of; if he de- 
serves any credit at all, it is for not answering the charge made 
against him : at the same time, that, by not answering it, he has 
left unimpeached the credit of the charge itself. 

\^Here the sheriff tendered some form of an affidavit, which the 
court refused to have sworn or read, for the same reasons that those, 
sworn and teiidered by the defendant's counsel, had been before re- 
fused. Mr. Curran, however, consented to its being sivorn and 
read; but the attorney- general declined it, being unacquainted with 
the contents, and uninstructed as to its tendency ; it therefe t was 
not sworn.'] 

Mr. Curran. — Is this then the way to meet a fair application 
to the court, to see whether justice has been done between the 
subject and the crown 1 I offer it again ; let the affidavit be read. 
And let me remind the court, that the great reason for sending 
a cause back to a jury is, that new light may be shed upon it : 
and how must your lordships feel, when you see that indulgence 
granted to the conscience of the jury, denied to the court ? 

Mr. Attorney General. — I am concerned that any lawyer 
should make a proposition in the manner Mr. Curran has done ; 
he proposes to have an affadavit read, provided we consent that 
others, which the court have already refused, should be now 
read.* I did not hear it offered ; but is it to be presumed I will 
consent to have an affidavit read, about which I know nothing ? 
Yesterday, without any communication with a human being, I 
did say, that I conceived it unnecessary to answer any of the af- 
fidavits, thinking that they were not sufficient to ground the ap- 
plication made to the court. And is it presumed I am so mad as 
to consent to the reading of affidavits which I have not seen ? 

[Here some altercation took place, and lordClonmel, chief jus- 
tice, interposed, saying, that the counsel had certainly a right to 
argue it upon the ground, that the sheriff was biassed, and did 
return a jury prejudiced against the traverser.] 

Mr. Curran was then proceeding to observe upon the expres- 
sion of one of the jury, sworn to in another affidavit, " that there 

* It may not be improper to observe, that Mr. Attorney-general mistook Mr. 
Curran's proposal, which was an unqualified offer to have Mr. Giffard's affidavit 
read. 



132 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

would be no safety in the country, until the defendant was either 
hanged or banished." When it was asked by the court, whether 
the time of its coming to the knowledge of the traverser, thai 
the sheriff was biassed, was stated in his affidavit ? 

Mr. Curran answered, he was in prison, and could not have 
the attendance of those counsel, whose assistance he had in court ; 
and besides, from the nature of the circumstances, it was impos- 
sible he could have been sufficiently apprised of its consequences, 
for he saw not that pannel till the day of his trial, when he could 
not have had time to make any inquiry into the characters, dis- 
positions, or connections of the jury. Mr. Curran then reverted 
to his argument on the expression of the juror. 

If triers had been appointed to determine the issue, favourable 
or not, what would have been their finding ? Could they say 
upon their oaths, that he was not unfavourable to that party 
against whom he could make such a declaration ? 

Favour is not cause of principal challenge, which, if put upon 
a pleading, would conclude the party. Favour is that which 
makes the man, in vulgar parlance, unfit to try the question. 
And as to the time these facts came to his knowledge, he has 
sworn that he was utterly ignorant of them at the time of his 
coming into court to take his trial. 

I will not glance at the character of any absent noble person, 
high in office ; but let it be remembered, that it is a government 
prosecution, and that the witness has, from a low and handicap 
situation, scraped himself into preferment ; perhaps, for I will put 
the best construction upon it, by offering himself as a man hon- 
estly anxious for the welfare of his country ; in short, it is too 
obvious to require any comment, what the nature of the whole 
transaction has been ; that he had got his commission as a com- 
pensation, pro lahore impendendo, and came afterwards into court 
to pay down the stipulated purchase. 

Had this, then, been an unbiassed jury, was there not some- 
thing in all these circumstances, that might have afforded more 
dehberation than that of one minute per man, for only so long 
was the jury out ; and had this been a fair witness, would he 
have lain down under a charge, which, if true, ought not only to 
damn this verdict, but his character for ever ? What would a 
corps of brother officers think of a person charged, upon oath, 
with the commission of two wilfid perjuries, and that charge re- 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 133 

maining undcnied 1 Here is an imdenied charge, in point of fact ; 
and although I do not call upon the court to say, that this is a 
guilty and abominable person, yet surely the suspicion is strongly 
so, and must be considered. This was at least a verdict, where 
the evidence went to the jury imder slighter blemishes than it 
will if my client has the advantage of another trial ; for then he 
will put out of the power of man, to doubt that this witness has 
been perjured. This witness, who has had notice, both here and 
at the trial, of the aspersions on his character, and yet has not 
called a human being to say that he entertained a contrary 
opinion of him. 

Was he known any where ? Did he crawl unobserved to the 
castle ? Was it without the aid or knowledge of any body, that 
that gaudy plumage grew on him, in which he appeared in 
court 1 If he was known for any thing else than what he is 
stated to be, it was, upon that day, almost a physical impossibil- 
ity, in a court-house which almost contained the country, not to 
have found some person, to give some sort of testimony respecting 
his general character. For though no man is bound to be ready 
at all times to answer particular charges, yet every man is sup- 
posed to come with his public attestation of common and general 
probity. But he has left that character, upon the merits of 
which my client is convicted, unsupported, even by his own poor 
corporal swearing. You are called upon, then, to say, whether 
upon the evidence of a being of this kind, such a man as that is 
to be convicted, and sentenced to punishment, in a country where 
humanity is the leading feature even of the criminal law. 

He then observed upon the second witness. — A man coming 
to support the credit of another collaterally, is himself particular- 
ly pledged ; then what was his testimony ? He did not know 
whether Mr. Giffard was concerned in the newspaper ! And 
now, you have the silence of Giffard himself in not answering 
Mr. Rowan's affidavit to contradict that. And next, he did 
not know whether his own cousin-german was the relation of 
their common uncle ! I call upon you, my lords, in the name of 
sacred justice, and your country, to declare whether the melan- 
choly scenes and murderous plots of the Meal-tub and the Pv-ye- 
house are to be acted over again. And whether every Titus 
Gates that can be found, is to be called into your courts, as the 
common vouchee of base and perjured accusation. 



134 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

He then proceeded to another ground, namely, that the direc- 
tion of the court was not, as he conceived, agreeable to the law 
of Ireland. The defence of my client (he added) was rested 
upon this, that there was no evidence of the fact of publication, 
upon the incredibility of the fact, and the circumstances of dis- 
credit in the character of the witness ; yet the court made this 
observation : " gentlemen, it scarcely lies in the mouth of Mr. 
Rowan to build a defence upon objections of this kind to the 
characters of witnesses, because the fact was public ; there were 
many there ; the room was crowded below ; the gallery was 
crowded above ; and the publicity of the fact enabled him to 
produce a number of witnesses to falsify the assertion of the pro- 
secutor, if in fact it could be falsified !" — Is that the principle of 
criminal law 1 Is it a part of the British law that the fate of 
the accused shall abide, not the positive establishment of guilt 
by the prosecutor, but the negative proof of innocence by him- 
self? Why has it been said in foolish old books, that the law 
supposes the innocence of every man until the contrary is 
proved ? How has it happened that that language has been ad- 
mired for its humanity, and not laughed at for its absurdity, in 
which the prayers of the court are addressed to heaven for the 
safe deliverance of the man accused? How comes it that so 
much public time is wasted in going into evidence of guilt, if the 
bare accusation of a man did call upon him to go into evidence 
of his innocence? The force of this observation is this: Mr. 
Rowan impeaches the credit of a witness, who has sworn that he 
saw him present, and doing certain acts at a certain meeting ; 
but it is asked, has he substantiated that discredit, by calling all 
the persons who were present, to prove his absence from that 
meeting, which is only stated to have existed by a witness whom 
he alleges to have perjured himself? I call upon the example of 
judicial character ; upon the faith of that high office which is never 
so dignified as when it sees its errors and corrects them, to say, 
that the court was for a moment led away, so as to argue from 
the most seductive of all sophisms, that of the posilio prmcipii. 

See what meaning is to be gathered from such words : we say, 
the whole that this man has sworn is a consummate lie ; show it 
to be so, says the court, by admitting a part of it to be true. 
It is a false swearing ; it is a conspiracy of two witnesses against 
this defendant ; well then, it lies upon him to rebut their testi- 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 135 

mony, by proving a great deal of it to be true ! Is conjecture 
then, in criminal cases, to stand in the place of truth and demon- 
stration ? Why were not some of those — (I will strip the case 
of the honour of names which I respect) — but why were not 
some of those, who knew that these two persons were to be 
brought forward, and that there were to be objections to their 
credit — if, as it is stated, it happened in the presence of a public 
crowd rushing in from motives of curiosity, why were not num- 
bers called on to establish that fact ? On the contrary the court 
have said to this effect: Mr. Rowan, you say you were not there; 
produce any of those persons with whom you were there, to 
swear you were not there ! You say it was a perjury ; if so, 
produce the people that he has perjured himself in swearing to 
have been there! But as to your own being there, you can 
easily show the contrary of that, by producing some man you 
saw there ! You say you were not there 1 Yes. There were 
one hundred and fifty persons there ; now produce any one of 
those to swear they saw you there ! 

It is impossible for the human mind to suppose a case, in which 
infatuation must have prevailed in a more progressive degree, 
than when a jury are thus, in fact, directed to receive no refu- 
tation nor proof of the perjury of the witness, but only of his 
truth. We will permit you to deny the charge by establishing 
the fact : we will permit you to prove that they swore falsely to 
your being there, by producing another witness to prove to a 
certainty that you were not there. — [Interrupted by lord Clon- 
mell.] 

Lord Clonmell, chief justice. — The reasoning of the court was 
strong upon that point : this is a transaction stated by the witness 
to have happened in open day, in a crowded assembly in the 
capital, amidst a number of persons dressed in the uniform of 
Hamilton Ptowan. There has been nothing suddenly brought 
forw^ard to surprise the traverser ; yet what has he done? did he 
offer, as is the common course, to prove an alibi? It is stated to 
be at such a day ; the witness swears at such an hour — the 
place is sworn to have been full of people, of Mr. Rowan's friends : 
but if there was even a partial assembly, it would be easy still 
to produce some one of those persons who were present to say, 
that the fact did not happen which has been sworn to, or if you 
say Mr. Rowan was not there, it is easier still to prove it by 
2R 



136 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

showing where he was ; as thus : I breakfasted with him, I dined 
with him, I supped with him, he was with me, he was not at 
Pardon's ; disprove that assertion by proving an affirmation in- 
consistent with it. 

Mr. Curran. — I beg leave to remind the court of what fell from 
it. " He may call," said the court, " any of those persons ; he 
has not produced one of them ;" upon this, I think, a most mate- 
rial point does hang. " He might have called them, for they were 
all of his own party." 

Lord Clonmell. — That is, if there were such persons there ; or 
if there was no meeting at all, he might have proved that. 

Mr. Curran. — There was no such idea put to the jury, as 
whether there was a meeting or not : it was said they were all 
of his party ; he might have produced them, and the non-produc- 
tion of them, was a " volume of evidence" upon that point. No 
refinement can avoid this conclusion, that even as your lordship 
now states the charge, the fate of the man must depend upon 
proving the negative. 

Until the credit of the witness was established, he could not 
be called upon to bring any contrary evidence. What does the 
duty of every counsel dictate to him, if the case is not made out 
by his adversary or prosecutor 1 Let it rest ; the court is bound 
to tell the jury so, and the jury are bound to find him not guilty. 
It is a most unshaken maxim, that 7iemo tenetur prodere se ipsum. 
And it would be indeed a very inquisitorial exercise of power, to 
call upon a man to run the risk of confirming the charge, under 
the penalty of being convicted by nil dicit. Surely at the crimi- 
nal side of this court, as yet, there has been no such judgment 
pronounced. It is only when the party stands mute of malice, 
that such extremes can be resorted to. I never before heard an 
intimation from any judge to a jury, that bad evidence, liable to 
any and every exception, ought to receive a sanction from the 
silence of the party. The substance of the charge was neither 
more nor less than this : that the falsehood of the evidence shall 
receive support and credit from the silence of the man accused. 
With anxiety for the honour and religion of the law, I demand 
it of you, must not the jury have understood that this silence was 
evidence, to go to them ? is the meaning contained in the ex- 
pression " a volume of evidence," only insinuation ? I do not know 
where any man could be safe ; I do not know what any man 



ARCHIBALD HAMILTON ROWAN, Esq. 137 

could do to screen himself from prosecution ; I know not how he 
could be sure, even when he was at his prayers before the throne 
of Heaven, that he was not passing that moment of his life, on 
which he was to be charged with the commission of some crime, 
to be expiated to society by the forfeiture of his liberty or of his 
life ; I do not know^ what shall become of the subject, if a jury 
are to be told that the silence of the man charged, is a " volume 
of evidence" that he is guilty of the crime. Where is it written? 
I know there is a place where vulgar frenzy cries out, that the 
public instrument must be drenched in blood, where defence is 
gagged, and the devoted wretch must perish. But even there 
the victim of such tyranny is not made to fill, by voluntary si- 
lence, the defects of his accusation ; for his tongue is tied, and 
therefore no advantage is taken of him by construction ; it can- 
not be there said that his not speaking is a volume of evidence 
to prove his guilt. 

But to avoid all misunderstanding, see what is the force of my 
objection : is it that the charge of the court cannot receive a 
practicable interpretation, that may not terrify men's minds with 
ideas such as I have presented ? No — I am saying no such thing : 
I have lived too long, and observed too much, not to know, that 
every word in a phrase is one of the feet upon which it runs ; and 
how the shortening or lengthening of one of those feet, will alter 
the progress or direction of its motion. I am not arguing that 
the charge of the court cannot, by any possibility, be reconciled 
to the principles of law ; I am agitating a bigger question ; I am 
putting it to the conscience of the court, whether a jury may not 
have probably collected the same meaning from it, which I have 
affixed to it ; and whether there ought not to have been a volume 
of explanation, to do away the fatal consequences of such mis- 
take. 

On what sort of a case am I now speaking ? on one of that 
kind, which it is known has been beating the public heart for 
many months; which from a single being in society has scarcely 
received a cool or tranquil examination. I am making that 
sort of application, which the expansion of liberal reason, and 
the decay of technical bigotry, have made a favoured applica- 
tion. 

In earlier times it might have been thought sacrilege to have 
meddled with a verdict once pronounced ; since that, the true 
s 



138 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF A. H. ROWAN, Esq. 

principles of justice have been better understood; so that now, 
the whole wisdom of the whole court will have an opportunity 
of looking over that verdict, and setting right the mistake which 
has occasioned it. 

Mr. Curran made other observations, either to corroborate his 
own, or to answer the opposite counsel, of which it is impossible 
to give an exact detail, and concluded : You are standing on 
the scanty isthmus that divides the great ocean of duration ; on 
one side, of the past, on the other, of the future : a ground, that 
while you yet hear me, is washed from beneath our feet. Let me 
remind you, my lords, while your determination is yet in your 
power, dum versatur adhuc intra penetralia Vestce, that on that 
ocean of future you must set your judgment afloat. And future 
ages will assume the same authority, which you have assumed ; 
posterity feel the same emotions which you have felt, when your 
little hearts have beaten, and your infant eyes have overflowed, 
at reading the sad history of the sufferings of a Russel, or a 
Sidney. 

[77ie conclusion of Mr. Curran' s speech was marked by another 
burst of applause, similar to those which accompanied his former 
exertions in this cause.'] 

T7ie application to set aside the verdict was refused by the court; 
and Mr. Rowan was sentenced to pay a fine of 500/., to be imprison- 
ed tivo years, and to find security for good behaviour, himself in 
2000/., and tioo sureties in 1000/. each. 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

IN DEFENCE OF MR. PATRICK FINNEY, 

January 16th, 1798. 



ABSTRACT OF THE INDICTMENT. 

First count. "That Patrick Finney, yeoman, on the thir- 
teenth day of April, in the thirty-seventh year of the king, and 
divers other days, at the city of DubUn, being a false traitor, did 
compass and imagine the death of our said lord, the king, and did 
traitorously and feloniously intend our said lord, the king, to kill, 
murder, and put to death." 

The overt acts laid, were as follow : " 1. Adhering to the per- 
sons exercising the powers of government in France, in case they 
should invade, or cause to be invaded, this kingdom of Ireland, 
they being enemies to the king, and at war. — 2. That the conspira- 
tors aforesaid did meet, &c., confer, consult, and deliberate, about 
adhering to the persons exercising the powers of government in 
France. — 3. Adhering to the persons exercising the powers of 
government in France. — 4. Conspiring that one or more persons 
should be sent into France, to excite an invasion of Ireland. — 5. 
Conspiring that one or more persons should be sent into France, 
to excite an invasion of this kingdom, and to make war therein ; 
and for that purpose did ask, levy, and receive, &c. from other 
traitors, money, to wit, from each 201. to defray the expenses of 
the persons to be sent. — 6. That conspiring, &c. they did send 
into France four persons unknown, to excite the persons ex- 
ercising the powers of government in France, to invade this king- 
dom, and make war therein. — 7. Conspiring to send, and sending 
four persons into France to persuade invasion, and to aid them 
in invading, and raising, and making war ; and Finney, then and 
there, demanding and receiving money, viz. 201., to defray the 
charges of said persons. — 8. That said Patrick Finney became an 

139 



140 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

United Irishman, for the purpose of assisting the persons exercising 
the powers of government in France, and, being met, to the num- 
ber of forty-eight other traitors, did divide into four sphts, which 
each contained twelve traitors, and each split did then choose 
one to be secretary, to consult on behalf thereof with other splits, 
under the denomination of baronial meetings, for the purpose of 
adhering and making war, in case of an invasion of Ireland from 
France, and then and there conspiring an attack upon the castle 
of Dublin, &c. and to deprive his majesty of the stores and am- 
munition therein ; and said Finney, to facilitate such attack, did 
advise and commend ot;her traitors to view White's court, &c. 
and give their opinion to their several splits, so that their secre- 
taries might report the same to their baronial meetings. — 9. Ad- 
hering to the persons exercising the powers of government in 
France, &c. and with forty-eight other conspirators, divided into 
four splits, each containing twelve, each split choosing a secre- 
tary, to confer for the purpose of adhering to the enemy in case 
of invasion, and confederating and agreeing that a violent attack 
should be made on the ordnance stores, &c. — 10. Consulting, &c. 
to procure an invasion. — 11. Consulting to raise insurrection, re- 
bellion, and war, in case of invasion of Ireland or Great Britain 
from France. — 12. Conspiring to assist the persons exercising the 
powers of government in France, in case of their invading this 
realm, with ships and arms." 

There was a second count, for " adhering to the king's enemies 
within the realm," and in support of this count, the overt acts 
laid, were exactly the same as those above recited. 

A jury being sworn, the attorney-general stated the case on 
the part of the crown ; the evidence being gone through on both 
sides — 

Mr. Curran.— jlf?/ Lords and Gentlemen of the Jury, In the 
early part of this trial, I thought I would have had to address 
you on the most important occasion possible at this side of 
the grave, a man labouring for life, on the casual strength of 
an exhausted, and at best, a feeble advocate. But, gentlemen, 
do not imagine that I rise under any such impressions — do not 
imagine that I approach you, sinking under the hopeless diffi- 
culties of my cause. — I am not now soliciting your indulgence to 
the inadequancy of my powers, or artfully enlisting your passions 
at the side of my client. — No ! gentlemen, but I rise with what 



MR. PATRICK FINNEY. 141 

of law, of conscience, of justice, and of constitution, there exists 
within this realm at my back ; and, standing in front of that great 
and powerful alliance, I demand a verdict of acquittal for my 
client ! — What is the opposition of evidence ! It is a tissue which 
requires no strength to break through ; it vanishes at the touch, 
and is sundered into tatters. 

The right honourable gentleman who stated the case in the first 
stage of this trial, has been so kind as to express a reliance, that 
the counsel for the prisoner would address the jury with the same 
candour which he exemplified on the part of the crown; readily 
and confidently do I accept the compliment, the more particu- 
larly, as in my cause I feel no temptation to reject it. Life can 
present no situation wherein the humble powers of man are so 
awfully, and so divinely excited, as in defence of a fellow-creature 
placed in the circumstances of my chent : and if any labours can 
peculiarly attract the gracious and approving eye of heaven, it is 
when God looks down on a human being assailed by human turpi- 
tude, and struggling with practices, against which the deity has 
placed his special canon when he said — " Thou shalt not bear 
false xoitness against thy neighbour — thou shalt do no murder!" 

Gentlemen, let me desire you again and again to consider all 
the circumstances of this man's case, abstracted from the influ- 
ence of prejudice and habit ; and if aught of passion assume do- 
minion over you, let it be of that honest, generous nature, that 
good men must feel when they see an innocent man depending 
on their verdict for his life. To this passion I feel myself insen- 
sibly yielding ; but unclouded, though not unwarmed, I shall, I 
trust, proceed in my great duty. Wishing to state my chent's 
case with all possible succinctness the nature of the charge ad- 
mits, I am glad my learned colleague has acquitted himself on 
this head already to such an extent, and with such ability, that 
any thing I can say will chance to be superfluous — in truth, that 
honesty of heart, and integrity of principle, for which all must 
give him credit, uniting with a sound judgment, and sympathetic 
heart, has given to his statement all the advantages it could 
have derived from these qualities. He has truly said, that " the 
declaratory act, the twenty-fifth of Edward III. is that on which 
all charges of high treason are founded," and I trust the obser- 
vation will be deeply engraven on your hearts. It is an act 
made to save the subject from the vague and wandering uncer- 



142 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

tainty of the law. It is an act which leaves it no longer doubt- 
ful whether a man shall incur conviction by his own conduct, or 
the sagacity of crown construction : whether he shall sink be- 
neath his own guilt, or the cruel and barbarous refinement of 
crown prosecution ? It has been most aptly called the blessed 
act ; and oh ! may the great God of justice and of mercy give 
repose and eternal blessings to the souls of those honest men by 
whom it was enacted ! By this law no man shall be convicted 
of high treason but on proveable evidence ; the overt acts of 
treason, as explained in this law, shall be stated clearly and dis- 
tinctly in the charge ; and the proof of these acts shall be equally 
clear and distinct, in order that no man's life shall depend on 
partial and wicked allegation. 

It does every thing for the prisoner, which he could do him- 
self — it does every thing but uttering the verdict, which alone 
remains with you, and which, I trust, you will give in the same 
pure, honest, saving spirit, in which that act was formed. — Gen- 
tlemen, I will call it an omnipotent act, if it could possibly appal 
the informer from our courts of justice: but law cannot do it — 
religion cannot do it — the feelings of human nature, frozen in 
the depraved heart of the wretched informer — cannot be 
tha\ved ! 

No law can prevent the envenomed arrow from being pointed 
at the intended victim ; but it has given him a shield in the in- 
tegrity of a jury. Every thing is so clear in this act, that all must 
understand : the several acts of treason must be recited, and 
proveable conviction must follow. — What is proveable conviction ? 
Are you at a loss to know ? Do you think if a man comes on 
the table, and says — " By virtue of my oath, I know of a conspi- 
racy against the state, and such and such persons are engaged in 
it." — Do you think his mere allegation shall justify you in a ver- 
dict of conviction ? A wretch coming on this table, of whatso- 
ever description, whether the noble lord who has been examined, 
or the honourable judges on the bench, or Mr. James O'Brien, 
who shall declare upon oath that a man bought powder, ball, 
and arms, intending to kill another — this is not proveable con- 
viction, the unlawful intention shall be attached by cogency of 
evidence, and the credit of the witness must stand strong and un- 
impeached. 

The law means not, that infamous assertion or dirty ribaldry is 



MR. PATRICK FINNEY. 143 

to overthrow the character of a man ; even in these imputations 
flung against the victim, there is, fortunately, something deter- 
gent, that cleanses the character it v^^as destined to befoul. 

In stating the law, gentlemen, I have told you that the overt acts 
must be laid and proved by positive testimony of untainted wit- 
nesses ; and in so saying, I have only spoken the language of the 
most illustrious writers on the law of England. I would, perhaps, 
apologize to you for detaining your attention so long on these 
particular points, but that in the present disturbed state of the 
public mind, and in the abandonment of principle which it but 
too frequently produces, I think I cannot too strongly impress 
you with the purity of legal distinction, so that your souls shall 
not be harrowed with those torturing regrets which the return 
of reason would bring along with it, were you, on the present 
occasion, for a moment to resign it to the subjection of your pas- 
sions ; for these, though sometimes amiable in their impetuosity, 
can never be dignified and just but under the control of reason. 
The charge against the prisoner is twofold — compassing and 
imagining the king's death and adhering to the king's enemies. 
To be accurate on this head is not less my intention than it is my 
interest; for if I fall into errors, they will not escape the learned 
counsel who is to come after me, and whose detections will 
not fail to be made in the correct spirit of crown prosecution. 
Gentlemen, there are no fewer than thirteen overt acts, as des- 
cribed, necessary to support the indictment ; these, however, it 
is not necessary to recapitulate. The learned counsel for the 
crown has been perfectly candid and correct in saying, that if 
any of them support either species of treason charged in the in- 
dictment, it will be sufficient to attach the guilt. I do not com- 
plain that on the part of the crown it was not found expedient 
to point out which act or acts went to support the indictment ; 
neither will I complain, gentlemen, if you fix your attention par- 
ticularly on the circumstance. Mr, Attorney-general has been 
pleased to make an observation, which drew a remark from my 
colleague, with whom I fully agree, that the atrocity of a charge 
should make no impression on you ; it was the judgment of can- 
dour and liberality, and should be your's — nor though you should 
more than answer the high opinion I entertain of you, and though 
your hearts betray not the consoling confidence which your looks 
inspire, yet do not disdain to increase your stock of candour and 
2S 



144 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

liberality, from whatever source it flows ; and though the abun- 
dance of my client's innocence may render him independent of 
its exertions, your country wants it all. You are not to suffer 
impressions of loyalty, or an enthusiastic love for the sacred per- 
son of the king, to give your judgments the smallest bias. You 
are to decide from the evidence which you have heard, and if 
the atrocity of the charge were to have any influence with you, 
it should be that of rendering you more incredulous to the possi- 
bility of its truth. I confess, I cannot conceive a greater crime 
against civilized society, be the form of government what it may, 
whether monarchical, republican, or, I had almost said, despotic, 
than an attempt to destroy the life of the person holding the ex- 
ecutive authority — the counsel for the crown cannot feel a greater 
abhorrence against it than I do ; and happy am I, at this mo- 
ment, that I can do justice to my principles, and the feelings of 
my heart, without endangering the defence of my client ; and that 
defence is, that your hearts would not feel more reluctant to the 
perpetration of the crimes with which he is charged, than the 
man who there stands at the bar of his country, waiting until you 
shall clear him from the foul and unmerited imputation, until 
your verdict, sounding life and honour to his senses, shall rescue 
him from the dreadful fascination of the informer's eye. — The 
overt acts in the charge against the prisoner are many, and all 
apparently of the same nature, but which, notwithstanding, ad- 
mit of every material distinction. This want of candour I attri- 
bute to the base imposition of the prosecutor on those who brought 
him forward. You find at the bottom of the charge a foundation- 
stone attempted to be laid by O'Brien — the deliberations of a so- 
ciety of united Irishmen, and on this are laid all the overt acts. 
1 said the distinction was of moment, because it is endeavoured 
to be held forth to the public — to all Europe, that, at a time like 
this of peril and of danger, thei'e are, in one province alone, one 
hundred and eleven thousand of your countrymen combined for 
the purpose of destroying the king, and the tranquillity of the 
country which so much depends on him — an assertion which you 
should consider of again and again before you give it any other 
existence than it derives from the attainting breath of the in- 
former, if nothing else should induce that consideration but the 
name of Irishman, the honours of which you share, so foully, and, 
as I shall demonstrate, so falsely aspersed. 



MR. PATRICK FINNEY. 145 

If you can say that one fact of O'Brien's testimony deserves 
belief, all that can from thence be inferred is, that a great com- 
bination of mind and will exists on some public subject. What 
says the written evidence on that subject ? What are the obli- 
gations imposed by the test-oath of the society of united Irishmen 1 
Is it unjust to get rid of religious differences and distinction ? 
Would to God it were possible ! Is it an offence against the state, 
to promote a full, free, and adequate representation of all the 
people of Ireland in parliament ? If it be, the text is full of its 
own comment, it needs not mine. As to the last cause, obliging 
to secrecy, — Now, gentlemen of the jury, in the hearing of the 
court, I submit to the opposite counsel this question, I will make 
my adversary my arbiter. — Taking the test-oath, as thus writ- 
ten, is there any thing of treason in it? However objectionable 
it may be, it certainly is not treasonable ; I admit there may be 
a colourable combination of words to conceal a real bad design, 
but to what evils would it not expose society, if, in this case, to 
suppose were to decide. A high legal authority thus speaks on 
this subject : " strong indeed must the evidence be, wdiich goes 
to prove that any man can mean by words any thing more, than 
what is conveyed in their ordinary acceptation." If the test of 
any particular community were an open one ; if, like the Lon- 
don corresponding society, it was to be openly published, then, 
indeed, there might be a reason for not using words in their com- 
mon application — but, subject to no public discussion, at least 
not intended to be so — why should the proceedings of those men, 
or the obligation by which they are connected, be expressed in 
the phraseology of studied concealment 1 

If men meet in secret, to talk over how best the French can 
invade this country, to what purpose is it that they take an en- 
gagement different in meaning? Common sense rejects the 
idea ! Gentlemen, having stated these distinctions, I am led to 
the remaining divisions of the subject you are to consider. I ad- 
mit, that, because a man merely takes this obligation of union, 
it cannot prevent his becoming a traitor if he pleases ; but the 
question for you to decide on would then be, whether every man 
who takes it must necessarily be a traitor 1 Independent of that 
engagement, have any superadded facts been proved against the 
prisoner 1 What is the evidence of O'Brien ? what has he stated 1 
Here, gentlemen, let me claim the benefits of that great privi- 



146 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

lege, whicli distinguishes trial by jury in this country from all 
the world. 

Twelve men, not emerging from the must and cobwebs of a 
study, abstracted from human nature, or only acquainted with 
its extravagances ; but twelve men, conversant with life, and 
practised in those feelings which mark the common and necessary 
intercourse between man and man. Such are you, gentlemen ; 
bow, then, does Mr. O'Brien's tale hang together ? Look to its 
commencement. He walks along Thomas street, in the open 
day, (a street not the least populous in the city,) and is accosted 
by a man, who, without any preface, tells him, he'll be murdered 
before he goes half the street, unless he becomes a united 
Irishman ! Do you think this a probable story 1 Suppose any 
of you, gentlemen, be a united Irishman, or a free mason, or a 
friendly brother, and that you met me walking innocently along, 
just like Mr. O'Brien, and meaning no harm, would you say, 
" Stop, Mr. Curran, don't go further, you'll be murdered before 
you go half the street, if you do not become an united Irishman, 
a free mason, or a friendly brother." Did you ever hear so 
coaxing an invitation to felomj as this ? Sweet Mr. James 
O'Brien ! come in and save your precious life ; come in and take 
an oath, or you'll be murdered before you go half the street ! — 
Do, sweetest, dearest Mr. James O'Brien, come in and do not risk 
your valuable existence." What a loss had he been to his king, 
whom he loves so marvellously ! Well, what does poor Mr. 
O'Brien do 1 Poor, dear man, he stands petrified with the mag- 
nitude of his danger — all his members refuse their office — he can 
neither run from the danger, nor call out for assistance ; his 
tongue cleaves to his mouth ! and his feet incorporate with the 
paving stones — it is in vain that his expressive eye silently im- 
plores protection of the passenger ; he yields at length, as greater 
men have done, and resignedly submits to his fate : he then en- 
ters the house, and being led into a room, a parcel of men make 
faces at him : but mark the metamorphosis — well may it be said 
that " miracles will never cease," — he who feared to resist in 
open air, and in the face of the public, becomes a bravo, when 
pent up in a room, and environed by sixteeji men ; and one is 
obliged to bar the door, while another swears him ; which, after 
some resistance, is accordingly done, and poor Mr. O'Brien be- 
comes a united Irishman, for no earthly purpose whatever, but 



MR. PATRICK FINNEY. 147 

merely to save his sweet life ! But this is not all — the pill so 
bitter to the percipiency of his loyal palate, must be washed 
down; and lest he should throw it off his stomach, he is filled up 
to the neck with beef and whiskey. — What further did they do ? 

Mr. O'Brien, thus persecuted, abused and terrified, would have 
gone and lodged his sorrows in the sympathetic bosom of the ma- 
jor ; but to prevent him even this little solace, they made him 
drunk. — The next evening they used him in the like barbarous 
manner, so that he was not only sworn against his will, but, poor 
man, he was made drunk against his inclination. Thus was he 
besieged with imited beef stakes and whiskey, and against such 
potent assailants not even Mr. O'Brien could prevail. 

Whether all this whiskey that he has been/orcec/to drink has 
produced the effect or not, Mr. O'Brien's loyalty is better than 
his memory. In the spirit of loyalty he becomes prophetic, and 
told to Lord Portarlington the circumstances relative to the in- 
tended attack on the ordnance stores full three weeks before 
he had obtained the information through moral agency. — Oh ! 
honest James O'Brien ! — honest James O'Brien ! Let others 
vainly argue on logical truth and ethical falsehood, but if I can 
once fasten him to the ring of perjury, I will bait him at it, until 
his testimony shall fail of producing a verdict, although human 
nature were as vile and monstrous in you as she is in him ! He 
has made a mistake! but surely no man's life is safe if such evi- 
dence were admissible ; what argument can be founded on his 
testimony, when he swears he has perjured himself, and that any 
thing he says must be false; I must not believe him at all, and 
by a paradoxical conclusion, suppose against " the damnation" 
of his own testimony, that he is an honest man ! [Another of the 
prisoner's counsel having here suggested something to Mr. 
Curran, he continued.] My learned friend supposed me to be 
mistaken, and confounding the evidences of O'Brien and Clark ; 
but I am not ; I advert to what O'Brien said to lord Portar- 
lington, respecting the attack on the arsenal. 

Strongly as I feel my interest keep pace with that of my cli- 
ent, I would not defend him at the expence of truth ; I seek not 
to make him worse than he is ; whatever he may be, God Al- 
mighty convert his mind ! May his reprobation, — but I beg his 
pardon, let your verdict stamp that currency on his credit ; it 
will have more force than anv casual remarks of mine. How 



148 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

this contradiction in Mr. O'Brien's evidence occurred I am at no 
loss to understand. He started from the beginning with an in- 
tention of informing against some person, no matter against 
whom ; and whether he ever saw the prisoner at the time he 
gave the information to lord Portarlington is a question; but 
none, that he fabricated the story for the purpose of imposing on 
the honest zeal of the law officers of the crown. 

Having now glanced at a part of this man's evidence, I do not 
mean to part with him entirely, I shall have occasion to visit him 
again ; but before I do, let me, gentlemen, once more impress 
upon your minds the observation which my colleague applied to 
the laws of high treason, that if they are not explained on the 
statute book, they arc explained on the hearts of all honest men ; 
and, as St. Paul says, " though they know not the law, they obey 
the statutes thereof." The essence of the charge submitted to 
your consideration tends to the dissolution of the connexion be- 
tween Ireland and Great Britain. 

I own, it is with much warmth and self gralulation, that I feel 
this calumny answered by the attachment of every good man to 
the British constitution. I feel, I embrace its principles; and 
when I look on you, the proudest benefit of that constitution, I 
am relieved from the fears of advocacy, since I place my client 
under the influence of its sacred shade. This is not the idle 
sycophancy of words. — It is not crying " Lord ! Lord ! but doing 
the will of my Father who is in heaven." If my client were to 
be tried by a jury of Ludgate-hill shop-keepers, he would ere now 
be in his lodging. The law of England would not suffer a man 
to be cruelly butchered in a court of justice. The law of Eng- 
land recognises the possibility of villains thirsting for the blood of 
their fellow creatures ; and the people of Ireland have no cause 
to be incredulous of the fact. Thus it is, that in England two 
witnesses are essential to the proof of high treason; and the 
poorest wretch that crawls on British ground, has this protection 
between him and those vampyres who crawl out of their graves 
in search of human blood. If there be but one witness, there is 
the less possibility of contradicting him — he the less fears any 
detection of his murderous tale, having only infernal communica- 
tion between him and the author of all evil ; and when on the 
table, which he makes the altar of his sacrifice, however com- 
mon men may be aileclcd at sight of iiic innocent victim, it can- 



MR. PATRICK FINNEY. 149 

not be supposed that the prompter of his perjury will instigate 
him to retribution: — this is the law in England and God forbid 
that Irishmen should so differ, in the estimation of the law, from 
Englishmen, that their blood is not equally worth preserving. 

I do not, gentlemen, apply any part of this observation to you; 
you are Irishmen yourselves, and, I know you will act proudly 
and honestly. Why the law of England renders two witnesses 
necessary, and one witness insuflicient, to take away the life of a 
man, on a charge of high-treason, is founded on the principles of 
common sense, and common justice ; for unless the subject were 
guarded by this wise prevention, every w^retch who could so per- 
vert the powers of invention, as to trump up a tale of treason 
and conspiracy, would have it in his power to defraud the crown 
into the most abominable and afflicting acts of cruelty and op- 
pression. 

Gentlemen of the jury, though from the evidence wdiich has 
been adduced against the prisoner they have lost their value, 
yet, had they been necessary, I must tell you, that my client 
came forward under a disadvantage of great magnitude, the ab- 
sence of two witnesses, very material to his defence. — I am not 
now at liberty to say what, I am instructed, would have been 
proved by May, and Mr. Roberts. — Why is not Mr. Roberts here ? 
Recollect the admission of O'Brien, that he threatened to settle 
him, and you will cease to wonder at his absence, when, if he 
came, the dagger was in preparation to be plunged into his 
heart. — I said Mr. Roberts was absent: I correct myself — No ! in 
effect he is here. I appeal to the heart of that obdurate man, 
what would hav^e been his testimony if he had dared to venture 
a personal evidence on this trial ? — Gracious God ! Is a tyranny 
of this kind to be borne with, where law is said to exist ! Shall 
the horrors which surround the informer, the ferocity of his 
countenance, and the terrors of his voice, cast such a wide and 
appalling influence, that none dare approach and save the vic- 
tim which he marks for ignominy and death ! 

Now, gentlemen, be pleased to look to the rest of O'Brien's 
testimony : he tells you there are one hundred and eleven thou- 
sand men in one province, added to ten thousand of the inhabit- 
ants of the metropolis, ready to assist the object of an invasion. 
What ! gentlemen, do you think there are so many in one pro- 
vince — so many in your city, combined against their country ? 



150 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

At such a time as this, do you think it a wise thing to say, on 
the evidence of the abominable O'Brien, that if the enemy was 
to invade this country, there are one hundred and eleven thou- 
sand men ready to run to his standard 1 But this is not the most 
appalling view of this question. — For its importance, and its 
novelty, this is the most unprecedented trial in the annals of this 
country. I recollect none bearing any affinity to it, save that 
of the unhappy wanderer, Jackson : and promising that I mean 
not the smallest allusion to the conduct of public measures in this 
country, are you prepared, I ask you seriously, are you pre- 
pared to embark your respectable characters in the same bottom 
with this detestable informer? — Are you ready on such evidence 
to take away, one by one, the lives of a hundred thousand men, 
by prosecutions in a court of justice? Are you prepared, when 
O'Brien shall come forward against ten thousand of your fellow- 
citizens, to assist him in digging the graves, which he has destined 
to receive them one by one ? No ! could your hearts yield for a 
moment to the suggestion, your own reflections would vindicate 
the justice of God, and the insulted character of man ; you would 
fly from the secrets of your chamber, and take refuge in the 
multitude, fx*om those " compunctious visitings," which meaner 
men could not look on without horror. Do not think I am speak- 
ing disrespectfully of you when I say that while an O'Brien may 
be found, it may be the lot of the proudest among you to be in 
the dock instead of the jury box ; how then on such an occasion 
would any of you feel, if such evidence as has been heard this 
day were adduced against you 1 

The application affects you — you shrink from the imaginary 
situation — remember then the great mandate of your religion, 
and " do unto all men as you would they should do unto you.'' 
Why do you condescend to listen to me with such attention ? 
why so anxious, if even from me any thing should fall tending to 
enlighten you on the present awful occasion ? it is, because, 
bound by the sacred obligations of an oath, your heart will not 
allow you to forfeit it. Have yoii any doubt that it is the ob- 
ject of O'Brien to take down the prisoner for the reward that 
follows? Have you not seen with what more than instinctive 
keenness this blood-hound has pursued his victim ? how he has 
kept him in view from place to place until he hunts him through 
the avenues of the court, to where the unhappy man stands now, 



MR. PATRICK FINNEY. 151 

hopeless of all succour but that which your verdict shall afford. 
I have heard of assassination by sword, by pistol, and by dagger, 
but here is a wretch who would dip the evangelists in blood — 
if he thinks he has not sworn his victim to death, he is ready to 
swear, without mercy and without end ; but oh ! do not, I con- 
jure you, suffer him to take an oath ; the arm of the murderer 
should not pollute the purity of the gospel ; if he will swear, let 
it be on the knife, the proper symbol of his profession ! — Gentle- 
men, I am reminded of the tissue of abomination, with which this 
deadly calumniator, this O'Brien, has endeavoured to load so 
large a portion of your adult countrymen. He charges one 
hundred thousand Irishmen with the deliberate cruelty of de- 
priving their fellow-creatures of their eyes, tongues, and hands ! 
Do not believe the infamous slander ! If I were told that there 
was in Ireland one man who could so debase human nature, I 
should hesitate to believe that even O'Brien were he. I have 
heard the argument made use of, that, in cases of a very foul 
nature, witnesses cannot be found free from imputation ; this ad- 
mitted in its fullest extent, it does not follow, that such evidence 
is to be accredited without other support. In such cases strong 
corroboration is necessary, and you would be the most helpless 
and unfortunate men in the world, if you were under the neces- 
sity of attending to the solitary testimony of such witnesses. In 
the present prosecution two witnesses have been examined, for 
the respectable character of lord Portarlington must not be pol- 
luted by a combination with O'Brien : if his lordship had told 
exactly the same story with O'Brien, it could not, however, be 
considered as corroborating O'Brien, who might as easily have 
uttered a falsehood to lord Portarhngton as he did here ; but 
how much more strongly must you feel yourselves bound to re- 
ject his evidence, when appealing to his lordship, he is materially 
contradicted, and his perjury established. With respect to Clark, 
he fixes no corroborative evidence whatever to the overt acts 
laid in the indictment. In endeavouring to slide in evidence of 
a conspiracy to murder Thompson, what might be the conse- 
quence, if such a vile insinuation took possession of your minds? — 
I am not blinking the question, I come boldly up to it — there is 
not the most remote evidence to connect the fate of Thompson 
with the present case, and nothing could show the miserable 
paucity of his evidence more, than seeking to support it on what 
2T 



152 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

did not at all relate to the charge. Five witnesses, as if by the 
interference of providence, have discredited O'Brien to as many 
facts. 

What did the simple and honest evidence of John Clarke of 
Blue-bell amount to against O'Brien? it attached the double 
crime of artifice and perjury, and added robbery to the personi- 
fication. See now in Dublin there are at this moment thousands 
and ten thousands of your fellow citizens, anxiously by, waiting 
to know if you will convict the prisoner on the evidence of a wil- 
ful and corrupt perjurer ; whether they are, each in his turn, to 
feel the fatal effects of his condemnation, or whether they are to 
find protection in the laws from the machinations of the inforiner. 
[Mr. Curran having been reminded to observe on the recipe for 
coining.] No ! continued he, let him keep his coining for him- 
self; it suits him well, and is the proper emblem of his conscience, 
copper washed. Would you let such a fellow as this into your 
house as a servant under the impressions which his evidence 
must make on your minds ? 

If you would not take his services in exchange for wages, will 
you take his perjury in exchange for the life of a fellow crea- 
ture 1 How will you feel, if the assignats of such evidence pass 
current for human blood ! How will you bear the serrated and 
iron fangs of remorse, gnawing at your hearts, if in the moment 
of abandonment, you suffer the victim to be massacred even in 
our arms ? But has his perjury stopped here ? What said the 
innocent countryman, Patrick Cavanagh? — Pursuing the even 
tenor of his way, in the paths of honest industry, he is in the act 
of fulfilling the decree of his Maker ; he is earning his bread by 
the sweat of his brow, when this villain, less pure than the arch- 
fiend who brought this sentence of laborious action on mankind, 
enters the habitation of peace and humble industry, and, not 
content with dipping his tongue in perjury and blood, robs the 
poor man of two guineas ! Can you wonder that he crept into 
the hole of the multitude when the witness would have developed 
him? do you wonder that he endeavoured to shun your eyes? 

At this moment even the bold and daring villany of O'Brien 
stood abashed ; he sav\' the eye of heaven in that of an innocent 
and injured man ; perhaps the feeling was consummated by a 
glance from the dock — his heart bore testimony to his guilt, and 
he fled for the same ! Gracious God ! have you been so soiled in 



MR. PATRICK FINNEY. 153 

the vile intercourse, that you will give him a degree of credit, 
which you will deny to the candid and untainted evidence of so 
many honest men 1 But I have not done with him yet — while an 
atom of his vileness hangs together, I will separate it, lest you 
should chance to be taken by it. Was there a human creature 
brought forward to say he is any other than a villain 1 did his 
counsel venture to ask our witnesses, why they discredited him ? 
did he dare to ask on what they established their assertions? no! 
by this time it is probable Mr. O'Brien is sick of investigation. 
You find him coiling himself in the scaly circles of his cautious 
perjury, making anticipated battle against any one who should 
appear against him ; but you see him sink before the proof. 

Do you feel, gentlemen, that I have been wantonly aspersing 
this man's character ? Is he not a perjurer, a swindler ? and that 
he is not a murderer, will depend on you. He assumes the cha- 
racter of a king's officer, to rob the king's people of their money ; 
and afterwards, when their property fails him, he seeks to rob 
them of their lives ! What say you to his habitual fellowship 
with baseness and fraud ? He gives a recipe instructing to felony, 
and counterfeiting the king's coin ; and when questioned about it, 
what is his answer ? — why truly, that it was " only a light, easy 
way of getting money — only a little bit of a humbug." Good 
God ! I ask you, has it ever came across you, to meet with such 
a constellation of infamy ! 

Beside the perjury, Clark had nothing to say, scarcely ground 
to turn on. He swears he was not in the court yesterday — what 
then? why, he has only perjured himself! — well, call little skir- 
mish up again ? — vvhy, it was but a mistake ! a little puzzled or 
so, and not being a lazvi/er, he could not tell whether he was in 
court or not ! Mr. Clark is a much better evidence than my 
lord Portarlington — his lordship, in the improvidence of truth, 
bore a single testimony ; while Clark, wisely providing against 
contingences, swore at both sides of the gutter ; but the lesser 
perjurer is almost forgotten in the greater. No fewer than five 
perjuries are established against the loyal Mr. O'Brien, who has 
been *' united to every ho?iest man" — if indicted on any one of 
these, I must tell you, gentlemen, that he could not be sworn in a 
court of justice ; on the testimony of five witnesses, on his own 
testimony, he stands indicted before you ; and, gentlemen, you 
must refuse him that credit, not to be squandered on such base- 

7/ 



154 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF MR. FINNEY. 

ness and profligacy. The present cause takes in the entire cha- 
racter of your country, which may suffer in the eyes of all Eu- 
rope by your verdict. This is the first prosecution of the kind 
brought forward to view. — It is the great experiment of the in- 
formers of Ireland, to ascertain how far they can carry on a 
traffic in human blood ! This cannibal informer, this demon, 
O'Brien, greedy after human gore, has tifteen other victims in 
reserve, if, from your verdict, he receives the unhappy man at 
the bar ! Fifteen more of your fellow citizens are to be tried on his 
evidence ! Be you then their saviours ; let your verdict snatch 
them from his ravening maw, and interpose between yourselves 
and endless remorse ! 

I know, gentleman, I would but insult you, if I were to apolo- 
gise for detaining you thus long : if I have apology to make to 
any person, it is to my client, for thus delaying his acquittal. 
Sweet is the recollection of having done justice, in that hour 
when the hand of death presses on the human heart ! Sweet is 
the hope which it gives birth to ! From you I demand that jus- 
tice for my client, your innocent and unfortunate fellow subject 
at the bar ; and may you have for it a more lasting reward than 
the perishable crown we read of, which the ancients placed on 
the brow of him who saved in battle the life of a fellow citizen. 

If you should ever be assailed by the hand of the wformcr, 
may you find an all-powerful refuge in the example which you 
shall set this day ; earnestly do I pray that you may never ex- 
perience what it is to count the tedious hours in captivity, pining 
in the damps and gloom of the dungeon, while the wicked one is 
going about at large, seeking whom he may devour. There is 
another than a human tribunal, where the best of us will have 
occasion to look back on the little good we have done. In that 
awful trial, oh ! may your verdict this day assure your hopes, 
and give you strength and consolation in the presence of an ad- 
judging God. 

{Here ended Mr. Currmi's address: and to say that the reporter 
has done it justice, is a presvmption ivhich he disclaims. To keep 
pace with the rapid flow of his eloquence, is impossible ; the hearer 
stands in astonishment and rapture, viewing the majesty of its 
course; and he who most admires it, is least able to record it.~\ 

Mr. FlNPfEY WAS ACQUITTED. 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

IN DEFENCE OF MR. PETER FINNERTY, 

On Friday, December 22d, 1797. 



ABSTRACT OF THE INDICTMENT. 

Mr. Peter Finnerty being put to the bar, the pannel of the 
petty jurors was called ; there appeared above one hundred and 
forty names on it. 

The clerk of the crown then gave Mr. Finnerty in charge of the 
jury, upon an indictment, stating, " That at the general assizes, 
and general gaol delivery, holden at Carrickfergus, in and for the 
county of Antrim, on the seventeenth day of April, in the thirty- 
seventh year of the king, before the honourable Matthias Finu- 
cane, one of the judges of his majesty's court of common pleas in 
Ireland, and the honourable Denis George, one of the barons of 
his majesty's court of exchequer in Ireland, justices and commis- 
sioners assigned to deliver the gaol of our said lord, the king, in and 
for the county of Antrim, of the several prisoners and malefactors 
therein, one William Orr, late of Farranshane, in said county An- 
trim, yeoman, was in lawful manner indicted for feloniously 
administering a certain oath and engagement, upon a book, 
to one Hugh Wheatly ; which oath and engagement import- 
ed to bind the said Hugh Wheatly, who then and there took 
the same, to be of an association, brotherhood, and society, 
formed for seditious purposes ; and also, for feloniously causing, 
procuring, and inducing said Hugh Wheatly to take an oath 
of said import last mentioned, and also for feloniously admin- 
istering to said Hugh Wheatly another oath, importing to bind 
said Hugh Wheatly not to inform or give evidence against 
any brother, associate, or confederate of a certain society then 
and there formed ; and also, for feloniously causing, procur- 
ing, and seducing said Hugh Wheatly to take an oath of said 

155 



156 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP 

import last mentioned. And afterwards at Carrickfergus afore- 
said, before the right honourable Barry lord Yelverton, lord chief 
baron of his majesty's court of exchequer, in Ireland, and the 
honourable Tankerville Chamberlaine, one of his majesty's jus- 
tices of his court of chief place in Ireland, at a general assizes, 
&c., on the sixteenth day of September, in the thirty-seventh 
year of the king, said William Orr, by the verdict of a certain 
jury of said county of Antrim, between our said lord, the king, 
and said William Orr, taken of and for the felony aforesaid, in 
due manner, was tried, convicted, and attainted, and for the same 
was duly executed ; and that he, well knowing the premises, but 
being a wicked and ill disposed person, and of unquiet conversa- 
tion and disposition, and devising and intending to molest and 
disturb the peace and public tranquillity of this kingdom of Ire- 
land ; and to bring and draw the trial aforesaid, and the verdict 
thereon, for our said lord, the king, against this William Orr 
given, and the due course of law in that behalf had, as aforesaid, 
into hatred, contempt, and scandal, with all the liege subjects of 
our said lord, the king ; and to persuade, and cause the subjects 
of our said lord, the king, to believe, that the trial aforesaid was 
unduly had, and that the said William Orr, did undeservedly die 
in manner aforesaid ; and that his excellency, John Jeffreys, earl 
Camden, the lord lieutenant of this kingdom, after the conviction 
aforesaid, ought to have extended to the said William Orr, his 
majesty's gracious pardon of the felonies aforesaid; and that in 
not so extending such pardon, he, the said lord lieutenant, had 
acted inhumanly, wickedly, and unjustly, and in a manner un- 
worthy of the trust which had been committed to him by our 
said lord, the king, in that behalf; and that the said lord lieu- 
tenant, in his government of this kingdom, had acted unjustly, 
cruelly, and oppressively, to his majesty's subjects therein. And 
to fultil and bring to effect his most wicked and detestable vices 
and intentions aforesaid, on the twenty-sixth of October, in the 
thirty-seventh year of the king, at Mountrath street aforesaid, 
city of Dublin aforesaid, falsely, wickedly, maliciously, and se- 
ditiously, did print and publish, and cause and procure to be 
printed and published, in a certain newspaper entitled 'the press,' 
a certain false, wicked, malicious, and seditious libel, of and con- 
cerning the said trial, conviction, attainder, and execution of the 
said William Orr, as aforesaid, and of and concernins the said 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 157 

lord lieutenant and his government of this kingdom, and his ma- 
jesty's ministers employed by him in his government of this king- 
dom, according to the tenor and effect following, to wit, ' The 
death of Mr. Orr, [meaning the said execution of the said William 
Orr,] the nation has pronounced one of the most sanguinary and 
savage acts that has disgraced the laws. In perjury, did you not 
hear, my lord, [meaning the said lord lieutenant,] the verdict 
[meaning the verdict aforesaid] was given 1 Perjury accompanied 
with terror, as terror has marked every step of your government. 
[Meaning the government of this kingdom aforesaid, by the said 
lord lieutenant.] Vengeance and desolation were to fall on those 
who would not plunge themselves in blood. These were not 
strong enough : Against the express law of the land, not only was 
drink introduced to the jury, [meaning the jury aforesaid,] but 
drunkenness itself, beastly and criminal drunkenness, was em- 
ployed to procure the murder of a better man [meaning the said 
execution of the said William Orr] than any that now surrounds 
you, [meaning the said lord lieutenant.]' And in another part 
thereof, according to tenor and effect following, to wit : ' Re- 
pentance, which is a slow virtue, hastened, however, to declare 
the innocence of the victim, [meaning the said William Orr,] the 
mischief [meaning the said conviction of the said William Orr] 
which perjury had done, truth now stcpt forward to repair. 
Neither was she too late, had humanity formed any part of your 
counsels, [meaning the counsels of the said lieutenant.] Stung 
with remorse, on the return of reason, part of his jury, [meaning 
the jury aforesaid,] solemnly and soberly made oath, that their 
verdict [meaning the verdict aforesaid] had been given under the 
unhappy influence of intimidation and drink ; and in the most 
serious affidavit that ever was made, by acknowledging their 
crime, endeavoured to atone to God and to their country, for the 
sin into which they had been seduced.' And in another part 
thereof, according to the tenor and effect following, to wit : ' And 
though the innocence of the accused, [meaning the said William 
Orr,] had even remained doubtful, it was your duty, [meaning 
the duty of the said lord lieutenant,] my lord, and you [meaning 
the said lord lieutenant] had no exemption from that duty, to 
have interposed your arm, and saved him [meaning the said 
William Orr] from the death [meaning the execution aforesaid] 
that perjury, drunkenness, and reward had prepared for him, 



158 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP 

[meaning the said William Orr.] Let not the nation be told that 
you [meaning the said lord lieutenant] are a passive instrument 
in the hands of others ; if passive you be, then is your office a 
shadow indeed. If an active instrument, as you ought to be, you 
[meaning the said lord lieutenant] did not perform the duty which 
the laws required of you ; you, [meaning the said lord lieutenant] 
did not exercise the prerogative of mercy ; that mercy which 
the constitution had entrusted to you [meaning the said lord 
lieutenant] for the safety of the subject, by guarding him from 
the oppression of wicked men. Innocent it appears he [meaning 
the said William Orr] was, his blood [meaning the blood of the 
said William Orr] has been shed, and the precedent indeed is 
awful.' And in another part thereof, according to the tenor and 
etlect following, to wit. ' But suppose the evidence of Wheatly 
had been true, what was the offence of Mr. Orr [meaning the 
said William Orr] ? Not that he had taken an oath of blood and 
extermination — for then he had not suffered ? but that he [mean- 
ing the said William Orr] had taken an oath of charity and of 
union, of humanity and peace, he [meaning the said William Orr] 
has suffered. Shall we then be told that your government [mean- 
ing the government of this kingdom aforesaid, by the said lord 
lieutenant] will conciliate public opinion, or that the people will 
not continue to look for a better V And in another part thereof, 
according to the tenor and effect following, that is to say : ' Is it to 
be wondered, that a successor of Lord Fitzwilliam should sign the 
death-warrant of Mr. Orr [meaning the said William Orr]. Mr. 
Pitt had learned that a merciful lord lieutenant was unsuited to 
a government of violence. It was no compliment to the native 
clemency of a Camden, that he sent you [meaning the said lord 
lieutenant] into Ireland — and what has been our portion under 
the change, but massacre and rape, military murders, desolation 
and terror.' And in another part thereof, according to the tenor 
and effect here following, that is to say : " Feasting in your cas- 
tle in the midst of your myrmidons and bishops, you [meaning 
the said lord lieutenant] have little concerned yourself about the 
expelled and miserable cottager, whose dwelling, at the moment 
of your mirth, v^^as in flames, his wife and his daughter then un- 
der the violation of some commissioned ravager, his son agonizing 
on the bayonet, and his helpless infants crying in vain for mercy. 
These are lamentations that stain not the house of carousal. Un- 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 159 

der intoxicating counsels [meaning the counsels of the said lord 
lieutenant] the constitution has reeled to its centre, justice is not 
only blind drunk, but deaf, like Festus, to the words of soberness 
and truth.' And in another part thereof according to the tenor 
and effect here following, to wit : ' Let however the awful exe- 
cution of Mr. Orr [meaning the execution aforesaia of the said 
William Orr,] be a lesson to all unthinking juries, and let them 
cease to iiatter themselves that the soberest recommendation of 
theirs, and of the presiding judge, can stop the course of carnage, 
which sanguinary, and, I do not fear to say, unconstitutional laws 
have ordered to be loosed. Let them remember that, like Mac- 
beth, the servants of the crown have waded so far in blood that 
they find it easier to go on than to go back:' in contempt, &c. 
and against the peace." 

There were other counts charging the publication in different ways. 

The evidence for the prosecution being gone through, and 
some witnesses having been produced on the part of the traver- 
ser, the examination of whom was successively stopt by the 
court, it appearing that they were examined to prove the truth 
of the facts stated in the publication. 

Mr.CuRRAN. — Never did I feel myself so sunk imder the im- 
portance of any cause : to speak to a question of this kind at 
any tirue would require the greatest talent and the most ma- 
tured deliberation ; but to be obliged without either of those ad- 
vantages, to speak to a subject that hath so deeply shaken the 
feelings of this already irritated and agitated nation, is a task 
that fills me with embarrassment and dismay. 

Neither my learned colleague or myself received any instruc- 
tion or license until after the jury were actually sworn ; and we 
both of us came here under an idea that we should not take any 
part in the trial. This circumstance I mention, not as an idle 
apology for an effort that cannot be the subject of either praise or 
censure, but as a call upon you, gentlemen of the jury, to supply 
the defects of my efforts, by a double exertion of your attention. 

Perhaps I ought to regret that I cannot begin with any com- 
pliment, that may recommend me or my client personally to 
your favour. A more artful advocate would probably begin his 
address to you by compliments on your patriotism, and by felici- 
tating his client upon the happy selection of his jury, and upon 
2U 



160 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

that unsuspected impartiality in which, if he was innocent, he 
must be safe. You must be conscious gentlemen, that such idle 
verbiage as that could not convey either my sentiments or my 
client's upon that subject. You know and we know upon what 
occasion you are come, and by whom you have been chosen ; you 
are come to try an accusation professedly brought forward by 
the state, chosen by a sheriff who is appointed by our accuser. 

[//ere Mr. Attorney-general said, the sheriff tva'S elected by the 
city, and that that observation was therefore unfounded.^ 

Be it so : I will not now stop to inquire whose property the 
city may be considered to be ; but the learned gentleman seems 
to forget, that the election by that city, to whomsoever it may 
belong, is absolutely void, without the approbation of that very 
lord lieutenant, who is the prosecutor in this case. I do there- 
fore repeat, gentlemen, that not a man of you has been called to 
that box by the voice of my client ; that he has had no power to 
object to a single man among you, though the crown has: and that 
you yourselves must feel under what influence you are chosen, 
or for what qualifications you are particularly selected. At a 
moment when this wTetched land is shaken to its centre by the 
dreadful conflicts of the difTerent branches of the community ; 
between those who call themselves the partizans of liberty, and 
those that call themselves the partizans of power : between the 
advocates of infliction, and the advocates of sufTering; upon 
such a question as the present, and at such a season, can any 
man be at a loss to guess from what class of character and 
opinion a friend to either party would resort for that jury, which 
was to decide between both ? I trust, gentlemen, you know me 
too well to suppose that I could be capable of treating you with 
any personal disrespect; I am speaking to you in the honest con- 
fidence of your fellow citizen. When I allude to those unwor- 
thy imputations of supposed bias, or passion, or partiality, that 
may have marked you out for your present situation, I do so in 
order to warn you of the ground on which you stand, of the point 
of awful responsibility in which you are placed, to your conscience, 
and to your country ; and to remind you, that if you have been 
put into that box from any unworthy reliance on your complai- 
sance or your servility, you have it in your power before you leave 
it, to refute and to punish so vile an expectation by the integrity 
of your verdict ; to remind you that you have it in your power 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 161 

to show to as many Irishmen as yet hngcr in this oountry, that 
all law and justice have not taken their flight with our prosper- 
ity and peace ; that the sanctity of an oath, and the honesty of 
a juror are not dead amongst us ; and that if our courts of jus- 
tice are superseded by so many strange and terrible tribunals, it 
is not because they are deficient either in wisdom or virtue. 

Gentlemen, it is necessary that you should have a clear idea, 
first of the law, by which this question is to be decided : secondly, 
of the nature and object of the prosecution. As to the first, it 
is my duty to inform you that the law respecting libels has been 
much changed of late. — Heretofore, in conseqence of some de- 
cisions of the judges in Westminster hall, the jury was conceived 
to have no province but that of finding the truth of the innuendos 
and the fact of publication ; but the hbellous nature of that pub- 
lication, as well as the guilt or innocence of the publication, were 
considered as exclusively belonging to the court. In a system 
like that of law, which reasons logically, no one erroneous prin- 
ciple can be introduced, without producing every other that can 
be deducible from it. If in the premises of any argument you 
admit one erroneous proposition, nothing but bad reasoning can 
save the conclusion from falsehood. So it has been with this en- 
croachment of the court upon the province of the jury with re- 
spect to libels. The moment the court assumed as a principle 
that they, the court, were to decide upon every thing but the 
publication ; that is, that they were to decide upon the question 
of Hbel or no libel, and upon the guilt or innocence of the in- 
tention, which must form the essence of every crime ; the guilt 
or innocence must of necessity have ceased to be material. You 
see, gentlemen, clearly, that the question of intention is a mere 
question of fact. Now the moment the court determined that 
the jury was not to try that question, it followed of necessity that 
it was not to be tried at all ; for the court cannot try a question 
of fact. When the court said that it was not triable, there was 
no way of fortifying that extraordinary proposition, except by as- 
serting that it was not material. The same erroneous reasoning 
carried them another step, still more mischievous and unjust : if 
the intention had been material, it must have been decided upon 
as a mere fact under all its circumstances. Of these circum- 
stances the meanest understanding can see that the leading one 
must be the truth or the falsehood of the publication : but hav- 



162 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

ing decided the intention to be immaterial, it followed that the 
truth must be equally immaterial — and under the law so dis- 
torted, any man in England who published the most undeniable 
truth, and with the purest intention, might be punished for a 
crime in the most ignominious manner, without imposing on the 
prosecutor the necessity of proving his guilt, or getting any op- 
portunity of showing his innocence. I am not in the habit of 
speaking of legal institutions with disrespect ; but I am warrant- 
ed in condemning that usurpation upon the right of juries, by 
the authority of that statute, by which your jurisdiction is restor- 
ed. For that restitution of justice the British subject is indebted 
to the splendid exertions of Mr. Fox and Mr. Erskine, — those dis- 
tinguished supporters of the constitution and of the law ; and I am 
happy to say to you, that though we can claim no share in the 
glory they have so justly acquired, we have the full benefit of 
their success ; for you are now sitting under a similar act passed 
in this country, which makes it your duty and your right to de- 
cide upon the entire question upon its broadest grounds, and un- 
der all its circumstances, and of course to determine, by your 
verdict, whether this publication be a false and scandalous libel : 
false in fact, and published with the seditious purpose alleged 
of bringing the government into scandal, and instigating the peo- 
ple to insurrection. 

Having stated to you, gentlemen, the great and exclusive ex- 
tent of your jurisdiction, I shall beg leave to suggest to you a 
distinction that will strike you at first sight ; and that is, the 
distinction between public animadversions upon the character of 
private individuals, and those which are written upon measures 
of government, and the persons who conduct them. The former 
may be called personal, and the latter political publications. No 
two things can be more different in their nature, nor in the point 
of view in which they are to be looked on by a jury. The crimi- 
nality of a mere personal libel consists in this, that it tends to a 
breach of the peace ; it tends to all the vindictive paroxj'^sms of 
exasperated vanity, or to the deeper and more deadly vengeance 
of irritated pride. The truth is, few men see at once that they 
cannot be hurt so much as they think by the mere battery of a 
newspaper. They do not reflect that every character has a 
natural station, from which it cannot be effectually degraded, and 
beyond which it cannot be raised by the bawling of a newshawker. 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 163 

If it is wantonly aspersed, it is but for a season, and that for a 
short one, when it emerges like the moon from a passing cloud 
to its original brightness. It is right, however, that the law and 
that you should hold the strictest hand over this kind of public 
animadversion, that forces humility and innocence from their re- 
treat into the glare of public view ; that wounds and terrifies ; 
that destroys the cordiality and the peace of domestic life; and that 
without eradicatinc; a single vice, or a single folly, plants a thou- 
sand thorns in the iiuman heart. 

In cases of that kind I perfectly agree with the law, as stated 
from the bench ; in such cases, I hesitate not to think, that the 
truth of a charge ought not to justify its publication. If a pri- 
vate man is charged with a crime, he ought to be prosecuted in 
a court of justice, where he may be punished if it is true, and the 
accuser if it is false ; but far differently do I deem of the freedom 
of political publication. The salutary restraint of the former 
species, which I talked of, is found in the general law of all so- 
cieties whatever ; but the more enlarged freedom of the press, 
for which I contend in political publication, I conceive to be 
founded in the peculiar nature of the British constitution, and 
to follow directly from the contract on which the British govern- 
ment hath been placed by the revolution. By the British con- 
stitution, the power of the state is a trust, committed by the peo- 
ple, upon certain conditions : by the violation of which, it may be 
abdicated by those who hold, and resumed by those who confer- 
red it. The real security therefore of the British sceptre is the 
sentiment and opinion of the people, and it is consequently their 
duty to observe the conduct of the government ; and it is the pri- 
vilege of every man to give them full and just information upon 
that important subject. Hence the liberty of the press is in- 
separably twined with the liberty of the people. The press is the 
great public monitor ; its duty is that of the historian and the wit- 
ness, that " nil falsi audeat, nil veri Jion audeat discere ;" that its ho- 
rizon shall extend to the farthest verge and limit of truth ; that it 
shall speak truth to the king in the hearing of the people, and to 
the people in the hearing of the king ; that it shall not perplex 
either the one or the other with false alarm, lest it lose its charac- 
ter for veracity, and become an unheeded warner of real danger ; 
lest it should vainly warn them of that sin, of which the inevitable 
consequence is death. This, gentlemen, is the great privilege 



164 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

upon which you are to decide : and 1 have detained 3rou the 
longer, because of the late change of the law, and because of 
some observations that have been made, which I shall find it ne- 
cessary to compare with the principles I have now laid down. 

And now, gentlemen, let us come to the immediate subject of 
the trial, as it is brought before you, by the charge in the indict- 
ment, to which it ought to have been confined ; and also, as it is 
presented to you by the statement of the learned counsel, who 
has taken a much wider range than the mere limits of the accu- 
sation, and has endeavoured to force upon your consideration ex- 
traneous and irrelevant facts, for reasons which it is not my duty 
to explain. The indictment states simply, that Mr. Finnerty has 
published a false and scandalous libel upon the lord lieutenant 
of Ireland, tending to bring his government into disrepute, and to 
alienate the affections of the people; and one would have expect- 
ed, that, without stating any other matter, the counsel for the 
crown would have gone directly to the proof of this allegation ; 
but he has not done so ; he has gone to a most extraordinary 
length indeed of preliminary observation, and an allusion to facts, 
and sometimes an assertion of facts, at which I own I was as- 
tonished, until I saw the drift of these allusions and assertions. 
Whether you have been fairly dealt with by him, or are now 
honestly dealt with by me, you must be judges. He has been 
pleased to say, that this prosecution is brought against this letter 
signed Marcus, merely as a part of what he calls a system of at- 
tack upon government by the paper called the PRESS. As to 
this I will only ask you whether you are fairly dealt with? 
Whether it is fair treatment to men upon their oaths, to insinuate 
to them, that the general character of a newspaper (and that 
general character founded merely upon the assertion of the pro- 
secutor.) is to have any influence upon their minds, when they 
are to judge of a particular publication ? I will only ask you, 
what men you must be supposed to be, when it is thought that 
even in a court of justice, and with the eyes of the nation upon 
you, you can be the dupes of that trite and exploded expedient, 
so scandalous of late in this country, of raising a vulgar and mer- 
cenary cry against whatever man, or whatever principle, it is 
thought necessary to put down; and I shall therefore merely 
leave it to your own pride to suggest, upon what foundation it 
could be hoped, that a senseless clamour of that kind could be 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 165 

echoed back by the yell of a jury upon their oaths. I trust, you 
see that this has nothing to do with the question. 

Gentlemen of the jury, other matters have been mentioned, 
which I must repeat for the same purpose ; that of showing you 
that they have nothing to do with the question. The learned 
counsel has been pleased to say, that he comes forward in this 
prosecution as the real advocate for the liberty of the press, and 
to protect a mild and a merciful government from its licentious- 
ness ; and he has been pleased to add, that the constitution can 
never be lost while its freedom remains, and that its licentious- 
ness alone can destroy that freedom. As to that, gentlemen, he 
might as well have said, that there is only one mortal disease of 
which a man can die ; I can die the death inflicted by tyranny ; 
and when he comes forward to extinguish this paper in the ruin 
of the printer by a state prosecution, in order to prevent its dying 
of licentiousness, you must judge how candidly he is treating you, 
both in the fact and in the reasoning. Is it in Ireland, gentle- 
men, that we are told licentiousness is the only disease that can 
be mortal to the press 1 Has he heard of nothing else that has 
been fatal to the freedom of publication ? t know not whether 
the printer of the Northern Star may have heard of such things 
in his captivity, but I know that his wife and his children are 
well apprized that a press may be destroyed in the open day, not 
by its own licentiousness, but by the licentiousness of a military 
force. As to the sincerity of the declaration that the state has 
prosecuted in order to assert the freedom of the press, it starts a 
train of thought, of melancholy retrospect and direful prospect, 
to which I did not think the learned counsel would have wished 
to commit your minds. It leads you naturally to reflect at what 
times, from what motives, and with what consequences the go- 
vernment has displayed its patriotism, by these sorts of prosecu- 
tions. As to the motives ; does history give you a single instance 
in which the state has been provoked to these conflicts, except 
by the fear of truth, and by the love of vengeance 1 Have you 
ever seen the rulers of any country bring forward a prosecution 
from motives of filial piety, for libels upon their departed ances- 
tors ? Do you read that Elizabeth directed any of those state 
prosecutions against the libels which the divines of her times had 
written against her catholic sister, or against the other libels 
which the same gentlemen had written against her protestant 



166 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP 

father? No, gentlemen, we read of no such thing; but we 
know she did bring forward a prosecution from motives of per- 
sonal resentment; and we know that a jury was found time-serv- 
ing and mean enough to give a verdict, which she was ashamed 
to carry into effect. I said, the learned counsel drew you back 
to the times that have been marked by these miserable con- 
flicts. I see you turn your thoughts to the reign of the second 
James. I see you turn your eyes to those pages of governmental 
abandonment, of popular degradation, of expiring liberty, of mer- 
ciless and sanguinary persecution ; to that miserable period, in 
which the fallen and abject state of man might have been almost 
an argument in the mouth of the atheist and the blasphemer 
against the existence of an all just and an all wise first cause, if 
the glorious aera of the revolution that followed it had not refuted 
the impious inference, by showing that if man descends, it is not 
in his own proper motion ; that it is with labour and with pain, 
and that he can continue to sink only until, by the force and 
pressure of the descent, the spring of his immortal faculties ac- 
quires that recuperative energy and effort that hurries him as 
many miles aloft — he sinks but to rise again. It is at that period 
that the state seeks for shelter in the destruction of the press ; 
it is in a period like that, that the tyrant prepares for an attack 
upon the people, by destroying the liberty of the press ; by tak- 
ing away that shield of wisdom and of virtue, behind which the 
people are invulnerable ; in whose pure and polished convex, ere 
the lifted blow has fallen, he beholds his own image, and is turn- 
ed into stone. It is at those periods that the honest man dares 
not speak, because truth is too dreadful to be told ; it is then hu- 
manity has no ears, because humanity has no tongue. It is then 
the proud man scorns to speak, but like a physician baffled by 
the wayward excesses of a dying patient, retires indignantly 
from the bed of an unhappy wretch, whose ear is too fastidious 
to bear the sound of wholesome advice, whose palate is too de- 
bauched to bear the salutary bitter of the medicine that might 
redeem him ; and therefore leaves him to the felonious piety of 
the slaves that talk to him of life, and strip him before he is cold. 
I do not care, gentlemen, to exhaust too much of your atten- 
tion, by following this subject through the last century with 
much minuteness ; but tli£ facts are too recent in your mind not 
to show you, that the liberty of the press and the liberty of the 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 167 

people sink and rise together ; that the Hberty of speaking and 
the liberty of acting have shared exactly the same fate. You 
must have observed in England, that their fate has been the 
same in the successive vicissitudes of their late depression ; and 
sorry I am to add, that this country has exhibited a melancholy 
proof of their inseparable destiny, through the various and fur- 
ther stages of deterioration down to the period of their final ex- 
tinction ; when the constitution has given place to the sword, and 
the only printer in Ireland, who dares to speak for the people, is 
now in the dock. 

Gentlemen, the learned counsel has made the real subject of 
this prosecution so small a part of his statement, and has led you 
into so wide a range, certainly as necessary to the object, as in- 
applicable to the subject of this prosecution, that I trust you 
will think me excusable in somewhat following his example. 
Glad am I to find that I have the authority of the same example 
for coming at last to the subject of this trial. I agree with the 
learned counsel, that the charge made against the lord lieutenant 
of Ireland is that of having grossly and inhumanly abused the 
royal prerogative of mercy, of which the king is only the trustee 
for the benefit of the people. The facts are not controverted. 
It has been asserted that their truth or falsehood is indiiferent, 
and they arc shortly these, as they appear in this publication. 

Willaim Orr was indicted for having administered the oath of 
an united Irishman. Every man now knows what that oath is : 
that it is simply an engagement, first, to promote a brotherhood 
of affection among men of all religious distinctions; secondly, 
to labour for the attainment of a parliamentary reform ; and 
thirdly, an obligation of secrecy, which was added to it when the 
convention law made it criminal and punishable to meet by 
any public delegation for that purpose. After remaining up- 
wards of a year in gaol, Mr. Orr was brought to his trial ; was 
prosecuted by the state ; was sworn against by a common in- 
former of the name of Wheatly, who himself had taken the obli- 
gation, and was convicted under the insurrection act, which 
makes the administering such an obligation felony of death — the 
jury recommended Mr. Orr to mercy ; the judge, with a human- 
ity becoming his character, transmitted the recommendation to 
the noble prosecutor in this case. Three of the jurors made 
solemn affidavit in court, that liquor had been conveyed into their 
2 X 



168 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

box ; that they were brutally threatened by some of their fel- 
low-jurors with capital prosecution if they did not find the pri- 
soner guilty ; and that under the impression of those threats, and 
worn down by watching and intoxication, they had given a ver- 
dict of guilty against him, though they believed him in their con- 
science to be innocent. That further inquiries were made, which 
ended in a discovery of the infamous life and character of the 
informer; that a respite was therefore sent once, and twice, and 
thrice, to give time, as Mr. Attorney-general has stated, for his 
excellency to consider whether mercy could be extended to him 
or not ; and that, with a knowledge of all these circumstances, 
his excellency did finally determine that mercy should not be 
extended to him, and that he was accordingly executed upon 
that verdict. Of this publication, which the indictment charges 
to be false and seditious, Mr. Attorney-general is pleased to say, 
that the design of it is to bring the courts of justice into contempt. 
As to this point of fact, gentlemen, I beg to set you right. 

To the administration of justice, so far as it relates to the 
judges, this publication has not even an allusion in any part men- 
tioned in this indictment ; it relates to a department of justice, 
that cannot begin until the duty of the judge closes. Sorry should 
I be, that, with respect to this unfortunate man, any censure 
should be flung on those judges who presided at this trial, with 
the mildness and temper that became them, upon so awful an 
occasion as the trial of life and death. Sure am T, that if they 
had been charged with inhumanity or injustice, and if they had 
condescended at all to prosecute the reviler, they would not have 
come forward in the face of the public to say, as has been said 
this day, that it was immaterial whether the charge was true or 
not. Sure I am, their first object would have been to show that 
it was false, and readily should I have been an eye witness of 
the fact, to have discharged the debt of ancient friendship, of 
private respect, and of public duty, and upon my oath to have 
repelled the falsehood of such an imputation. Upon this subject, 
gentlemen, the presence of those venerable judges restrains what 
I might otherwise have said, nor should I have named them at 
all, if I had not been forced to do so; and merely to undeceive 
you, if you have been made to believe their characters to have 
any community of cause whatever, with the lord lieutenant of 
Ireland. To him alone it is confined, against him the charge is 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 169 

made, as strongly, I suppose, as the writer could find words to ex- 
press it, that the viceroy of Ireland has cruelly abused the pre- 
rogative of royal mercy, in suffering a man under such circum- 
stances to perish like a common malefactor. For this Mr. At- 
torney-general calls for your conviction as a false and scandalous 
libel ; and after stating himself every fact that I have repeated 
to you, either from his statement, or from the evidence, he tells 
you that you ought to find it false and scandalous, though he al- 
most in words admits that it is not false, and has resisted the ad- 
mission of the evidence by which we offered to prove every word 
of it to be true. 

And here, gentlemen, give me leave to remind you of the 
parties before you. The traverser is a printer, who follows that 
profession for bread, and who, at a time of great public misery 
and terror, when the people are restrained by law from debating 
under any delegated form ; when the few constituents that we 
have are prevented by force from meeting in their own persons, 
to deliberate or to petition ; when every other newspaper in Ire- 
land is put down by force, or purchased by the administration ; 
(though here, gentlemen, perhaps I ought to beg your pardon for 
stating without authority — I recollect when we attempted to ex- 
amine as to the number of newspapers in the pay of the castle, 
that the evidence was objected to,) at a season like this, Mr. Fin- 
nerty has had the courage, perhaps the folly, to print the pub- 
lication in question, from no motive under heaven of malice or 
vengeance, but in the mere duty which he owes to his family, 
and to the public. His prosecutor is the king's minister in Ire- 
land ; in that character does the learned gentleman mean to say, 
that his conduct is not a fair subject of public observation ? where 
does he find his authority for that, in the law or practice of the 
sister country ? have the virtues, or the exalted station, or the 
general love of his people preserved the sacred person even of 
the royal master of the prosecutor, from the asperity and the in- 
temperance of public censure, unfounded as it ever must be, with 
any personal respect to his majesty, in justice or truth ? have 
the gigantic abilities of Mr. Pitt, have the more gigantic talents 
of his great antagonist, Mr. Fox, protected either of them from 
the insolent familiarity, and for aught to know, the injustice with 
which writers have treated them ? What latitude of invective 
has the king's minister escaped upon the subject of the present 

y 



170 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

war 1 Is there any epithet of contumely, or of reproach, that 
hatred or that fancy could suggest, that are not publicly lavished 
upon him ? Do you not find the words, advocate of despotism, 
robber of the public treasure, murderer of the king's subjects, 
debaucher of the public morality, degrader of the constitution, 
tarnisher of the Britsh empire, by frequency of use lose all mean- 
ing whatsoever, and dwindle into terms, not of any peculiar re- 
proach, but of ordinary appellation ? And why, gentlemen, is 
this permitted in that country ? I'll tell you why ; — because in 
that country they are wise enough to see, that the measures of 
the state are the proper subject for the freedom of the press ; 
that the principles relating to personal slander do not apply to 
rulers or to ministers ; that to publish an attack upon a public 
minister, without any regard to truth, but merely because of its 
tendency to a breach of the peace, would be ridiculous in the 
extreme. What breach of the peace, gentlemen, I pray you in 
such a case 1 is it the tendency of such publications to provoke 
Mr. Pitt or Mr. Dundas to break the head of the writer, if they 
should happen to meet him ? No, gentlemen, in that country 
this freedom is exercised, because the people feel it to be their 
right ; and it is wisely suffered to pass by the state, from a con- 
sciousness that it would be vain to oppose it : a consciousness 
confirmed by the event of every incautious experiment. It is 
suffered to pass from a conviction, that, in a court of justice at 
least, the bulwarks of the constitution will not be surrendered to 
the state ; and that the intended victim, whether clothed in the 
humble guise of honest industry, or decked in the honours of 
genius, and virtue, and philosophy, whether a Hardy, or a Tooke, 
will find certain protection in the honesty and spirit of an English 

jury. 

But, gentlemen, I suppose Mr. Attorney-general will scarcely 
wish to carry his doctrine altogether so far. Indeed, I remember, 
he declared himself a most zealous advocate for the liberty of 
the press. I may, therefore, even according to him presume to 
make some observations on the conduct of the existing govern- 
ment. I should wish to know how far he supposes it to extend. 
Is it to the composition of lampoons and madrigals, to be sung 
down the grates by ragged ballad-mongers to kitchen-maids and 
footmen ? I will not suppose that he means to confine it to their 
ebullitions of Billingsgate, to those cataracts of ribaldry and 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 171 

scurrility, that are daily spouting upon the miseries of our wretch- 
ed fellow sufferers, and the unavailing efforts of those who have 
vainly laboured in their cause. I will not suppose that he con- 
fines it to the poetic licence of a birth-day ode ; the laiireat would 
not use such language ! In which case I do not entirely agree with 
him, that the truth or the falsehood is as perfectly immaterial to 
the law, as it is to the laureat, as perfectly unrestrained by the 
law of the land, as it is by any law of decency or shame, of mo- 
desty or decorum. But as to the privilege of censure or blame, 
I am sorry to say that the learned gentleman has not favoured 
you with his notion of the liberty of the press. Suppose an Irish 
viceroy acts a very little absurdly — may the press venture to be 
respectfully comical upon that absurdity ? The learned counsel 
does not, at least in terms, give a negative to that. But let me 
treat you honestly, and go further, to a more material point: 
suppose an Irish viceroy does an act that brings scandal upon 
his master — that fills the mind of a reasonable man with the fear 
of approaching despotism, that leaves no hope to the people of 
preserving themselves and their children from chains, but in com- 
mon confederacy for common safety. What is that honest man 
in that case to do ? I am sorry the right honourable advocate for 
the liberty of the press has not told you his opinion, at least in any 
express words. I will therefore venture to give you my far 
humbler thought upon the subject. I think an honest man ought 
to tell the people frankly and boldly of their peril ; and I must 
say I can imagine no villany greater than that of his holding a 
traitorous silence at such a crisis, except the villany and base- 
ness of prosecuting him, or of finding him guilty of such an honest 
discharge of his public duty. And I found myself on the known 
principle of the revolution of England, namely, that the crown 
itself may be abdicated by certain abuses of the trust reposed ; 
and that there are possible excesses of arbitrary power, which it 
is not only the right but the bounden duty of every honest man to 
resist at the risk of his fortune and his life. Now, gentlemen, 
if this reasoning be admitted, and it cannot be denied, if there 
be any possible event in which the people are obliged to look only 
to themselves, and are justified in doing so, can you be so absurd as 
to say, that it is lawful to the people to act upon it when it un- 
fortunately does arrive, but it is criminal in any man to tell them 
that the miserable event has actually arrived, or is imminently 



172 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

approaching ? Far am I, gentlemen, from insinuating that (ex- 
treme as it is) our misery has been matured into any deplorable 
crisis of this kind, from which 1 pray that the almighty God may 
for ever preserve us ! But I am putting my principle upon the 
strongest ground, and most favourable to my opponents, namely, 
that it never can be criminal to say any thing of the government 
but what is false, and I put this in the extreme in order to de- 
monstrate to you a fortiori, that the privilege of speaking truth 
to the people which holds in the last extremity, must also obtain 
in every stage of inferior importance ; and that however a court 
may have decided before the late act, that the truth was imma- 
terial in case of libel, that since that act no honest jury can be 
governed by such a principle. 

Be pleased now, gentlemen, to consider the grounds upon 
which this publication is called a libel, and criminal. Mr. Attor- 
ney-general tells you it tends to excite sedition and insurrection. 
Let me again remind you, that the truth of this charge is not 
denied by the noble prosecutor. What is it then, that tends to 
excite sedition and insurrection ? " The act that is charged upon 
the prosecutor, and is not attempted to be denied." And, gra- 
cious God ! gentlemen of the jury, is the public statement of the 
king's representative this ? "I have done a deed that must fill 
the mind of every feeling or thinking man with horror and indig- 
nation, that must alienate every man that knows it from the 
king's government, and endanger the separation of this distracted 
empire ; the traverser has had the guilt of publishing this fact, 
which I myself acknowledge; and I pray you to find him guilty." 
Is this the case which the lord lieutenant of Ireland brings for- 
ward ? Is this the principle for which he ventures, at a dreadful 
crisis like the present, to contend in a court of justice ? Is this 
the picture which he wishes to hold out of himself to the justice 
and humanity of his own countrymen ? Is this the history which 
he wishes to be read by the poor Irishman of the south and of 
the north, by the, sister nation, and the common enemy? 

With the profoundest respect, permit me humbly to defend his 
excellency, even against his own opinion. The guilt of this pub- 
lication he is pleased to think consists in this, that it tends to in- 
surrection. Upon what can such a fear be supported '{ After 
the multitudes that have perished in this unhappy nation within 
the last three years, and which has been borne with a patience 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 173 

unparalleled in the history of nations, can any man suppose that 
the fate of a single individual could lead to resistance or insurrec- 
tion? But suppose that it might — whatoughttobetheconductof 
an honest man l Should it not be to apprize the government 
and the country of the approaching danger f. Should it not be 
to say to the viceroy, you will drive the people to madness if you 
persevere in such bloody counsels, you will alienate the Irish na- 
tion, you will distract the common force, and you will invite the 
common enemy. Should not an honest man say to the people, 
the measure of your affliction is great, but you need not resort 
for remedy to any desperate expedients. If the king's minister 
is defective in humanity or wisdom, his royal master, and your 
beloved sovereign, is abounding in both ; at such a moment, can 
you be so senseless as not to feel, that any one of you ought to 
hold such language ? or is it possible you could be so infatuated, 
as to punish the man who was honest enough to hold it 1 Or is 
it possible that you could bring yourselves to say to your country, 
that at such a season the press ought to sleep upon its post, or to 
act like the perfidious watchman on his round, that sees the vil- 
lain wrenching the door, or the flames bursting from the windows, 
while the inhabitant is wrapt in sleep, and cries out that " 'tis 
past five o'clock, the morning is fair, and all well." 

On this part of the case, I shall only put one question to you. 
I do not affect to say that it is similar in all its points ; I do not 
affect to compare the humble fortunes of Mr. Orr with the saint- 
ed names of Russel or Sydney ; still less am I willing to find any 
likeness between the present period and the year 1683. But I 
will put a question to you, completely parallel in principle. 
When that unhappy and misguided monarch had shed the sacred 
blood, which their noble hearts had matured into a fit cement 
of revolution, if any honest Englishman had been brought to trial 
for daring to proclaim to the world his abhorrence of such a 
deed ; what would you have thought of the English jury that 
could have said, we know in our hearts what he said was true 
and honest ; but we will say upon our oaths that it was false and 
criminal; and we will by that base subserviency add another item 
to the catalogue of public wrongs, and another argument for the 
necessity of an appeal to heaven for redress. 

Gentlemen, I am perfectly awai'e that what I say may be easi- 
ly misconstrued ; but if you listen to me with the same fairness 



174 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

that I address you, I cannot be misunderstood. When I show 
you the full extent of your political rights and remedies ; when I 
answer those slanderers of British liberty, which degrade the 
monarch into a despot, who degrade the steadfastness of law into 
the waywardness of will; when I show you the inestimable 
stores of political wealth so dearly acquired by our ancestors, 
and so solemnly bequeathed ; and when I show you how much 
of that precious inheritance has yet survived all the prodigality 
of their posterity, I am far from saying that I stand in need of it 
all upon the present occasion. No, gentlemen, far am 1 indeed 
from such a sentiment. No man more deeply than myself de- 
plores the present melancholy state of our unhappy country. 
Neither does any man more fervently wish for the return of 
peace and tranquillity, through the natural channels of mercy 
and of justice. I have seen too much of force and of violence to 
hope much good from the continuance of them on one side, or 
retaliation from another. I have seen too much of late of politi- 
cal re-building, not to have observed, that to demolish is not the 
shortest way to repair. It is with pain and anguish that I should 
search for the miserable right of breaking ancient ties, or going 
in quest of new relations, or untried adventurers. No, gentle- 
men, the case of my client rests not upon these sad privileges of 
despair. I trust that as to the fact, namely, the intention of ex- 
citing insurrection, you must see it cannot be found in this publi- 
cation ; that it is the mere idle, unsupported imputation of ma- 
lice, or panic, or falsehood. And that as to the law, so far has 
he been from transgressing the Hmits of the constitution, that 
whole regions lie between him and those limits which he has not 
trod ; and which I pray to heaven it may never be necessary for 
any of us to tread. 

Gentlemen, Mr. Attorney-general has been pleased to open 
another battery upon this publication, which I do trust I shall 
silence, unless I flatter myself too much in supposing that hither- 
to my resistance has not been utterly unsuccessful. He abuses 
it for the foul and insolent familiarity of its address. I do clearly 
understand his idea : he considers the freedom of the press to be 
the license of offering that paltry adulation which no man ought 
to stoop to utter, or to hear ; he supposes the freedom of the 
press ought to be like the freedom of the king's jester, who, in- 
stead of reproving the faults of which majesty ought to be asham- 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 175 

ed, is base and cunning enough, under the mask of servile and 
adulatory censure, to stroke down and pamper those vices of 
which it is foolish enough to be vain. — He would not have the 
press presume to tell the viceroy, that the prerogative of mercy 
is a trust for the benefit of the subject, and not a gaudy feather 
stuck into the diadem to shake in the wind, and by the waving 
of the gaudy plumage, to amuse the vanity of the wearer. — He 
would not have it to say to him, that the discretion of the crown 
as to mercy, is Uke the discretion of a court of justice, as to law ; 
and that in the one case as well as the other, wherever the pro- 
priety of the exercise of it appears, it is equally a matter of right. 
He would have the press all fierceness to the people, and all 
sycophancy to power ; he would have it consider the mad and 
phrenetic depopulations of authority like the awful and inscruta- 
ble dispensations of providence, and say to the unfeeling and des- 
potic spoiler in the blasphemed and insulted language of religious 
resignation — the Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken 
away, blessed be the name of the Lord ! ! ! But let me condense 
the generahty of the learned gentleman's invective into questions 
that you can conceive. Does he mean that the air of this pub- 
lication is rustic and uncourtly? Does he mean, that when 
Marcus presumed to ascend the steps of the castle, and to address 
the viceroy, he did not turn out his toes as he ought to have 
done ? But, gentlemen, you are not a jury of dancing masters ? — 
Or does the learned gentleman mean that the language is coarse 
and vulgar ? If this be his complaint, my client has but a poor 
advocate. I do not pretend to be a mighty grammarian, or a 
formidable critic, but I would beg leave to suggest to you in se- 
rious humility, that a free press can be supported only by the ar- 
dour of men who feel the prompting sting of real or supposed ca- 
pacity ; who write from the enthusiasm of virtue, or the ambition 
of praise, and over whom, if you exercise the rigour of grammati- 
cal censorship, you will inspire them with as mean an opinion 
of your integrity as your wisdom, and inevitably drive them from 
their post : and if you do, rely upon it, you will reduce the spirit 
of publication, and with it the press of this country, to what it 
for a long interval has been, the register of births, and fairs, and 
funerals, and the general abuse of the people and their friends. 

But, gentlemen, in order to bring this charge of insolence and 
vulgarity to the test, let me ask you, whether you know of any 
2Y 



176 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

language which could have adequately described the idea of 
mercy denied, where it ought to have been granted, or of any 
phrase vigorous enough to convey the indignation which an hon- 
est man would have felt upon such a subject? Let me beg of 
you for a moment to suppose that any one of you had been the 
writer of this very severe expostulation with the viceroy, and 
that you had been the witness of the whole progress of this never 
to be forgotten catastrophe. Let me suppose that you had known 
the charge upon which Mr. Orr was apprehended, the charge 
of abjuring that bigotry which had torn and disgraced his coun- 
try, of pledging himself to restore the people of his country to 
their place in the constitution, and of binding himself never to 
be the betrayer of his fellow-labourers in that enterprise ; that 
you had seen him upon that charge removed from his industry, 
and confined in a gaol ; that through the slow and lingering pro- 
gress of twelve tedious months you had seen him confined in a 
dungeon, shut out from the common use of air and of his own 
limbs ; that day after day you had marked the unhappy captive, 
cheered by no sound but the cries of his family, or the clinking 
of chains ; that you had seen him at last brought to his trial ; 
that you had seen the vile and perjured informer deposing against 
his life ; that you had seen the drunken, and worn out, and ter- 
rified jury give in a verdict of death ; that you had seen the 
same jury, when their returning sobriety had brought back their 
conscience, prostrate themselves before the humanity of the 
bench, and pray that the mercy of the crown might save their 
characters from the reproach of an involuntary crime, their con- 
sciences from the torture of eternal self-condemnation, and their 
souls from the indelible stain of innocent blood. Let me suppose 
that you had seen the respite given, and that contrite and honest 
recommendation transmitted to that seat where mercy was pre- 
sumed to dwell ; that new and before unheard of crimes are 
discovered against the informer ; that the royal mercy seems to 
relent, and that a new respite is sent to the prisoner; that time 
is taken, as the learned counsel for the crown has expressed it, 
to see whether mercy could be extended or not ! that, after that 
period of lingering deliberation passed, a third respite is trans- 
mitted; that the unhappy captive himself feels the cheering 
hope of being restored to a family that he had adored, to a cha- 
racter that he had never stained, and to a country that he had 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 177 

ever loved ; that you had seen his wife and children upon their 
knees, giving those tears to gratitude, which their locked and 
frozen hearts could not give to anguish and despair, and implor- 
ing the blessings of eternal providence upon his head, who had 
graciously spared the father, and restored him to his children : 
that you had seen the olive branch sent into his little ark, but no 
sign that the waters had subsided. *' Alas! nor wife, nor children 
more shall he behold, nor friends, nor sacred home !" No seraph 
mercy unbars his dungeon, and leads him forth to light and life ; 
but the minister of death hurries him to the scene of suffering 
and of shame ; where, unmoved by the hostile array of artillery 
and armed men collected together, to secure, or to insult, or to 
disturb him, he dies with a solemn declaration of his innocence, 
and utters his last breath in a prayer for the liberty of his coun- 
try. Let me now ask you, if any of you had addressed the pub- 
lic ear upon so foul and monstrous a subject, in what language 
would you have conveyed the feelings of horror and indignation 1 — 
would you have stooped to the meanness of qualified complaint ? 
— would you have been mean enough 1 — but I entreat your for- 
giveness — I do not think meanly of you ; had I thought so meanly 
of you, I could not suffer my mind to commune with you as it 
has done ; had I thought you that base and vile instrument, at- 
tuned by hope and by fear into discord and falsehood, from whose 
vulgar string no groan of suffering could vibrate, no voice of in- 
tegrity or honour could speak, let me honestly tell you, I should 
have scorned to string my hand across it ; I should have left it 
to a fitter minstrel : if I do not therefore grossly err in my opinion 
of you, I could use no language upon such a subject as this, that 
must not lag behind the rapidity of your feelings, and that would 
not disgrace those feelings, if it attempted to describe them. 

Gentlemen, I am not unconscious that the learned counsel for the 
crown seemed to address you with a confidence of a very different 
kind : he seemed to expect a kind and respectful sympathy from 
you with the feelings of the castle, and the griels of chided au- 
thority. Perhaps, gentlemen, he may know you better than I 
do ; if he does, he has spoken to you as he ought ; he has been 
right in telHng you, that if the reprobation of this writer is weak, 
it is because his genius could not make it stronger : he has been 
right in telling you, that his language has not been braided and 
festooned as elegantly as it might, that he has not pinched the 



178 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

miserable plaits of his phraseology, nor placed his patches and 
feathers with that correctness of millinery which became so ex- 
alted a person. If you agree with him, gentlemen of the jury, 
if you think that the man, who ventures at the hazard of his 
own life, to rescue from the deep the drowned honour of his 
country, must not presume upon the guilty familiarity of pluck- 
ing it up by the locks, I have no more to say ; do a courteous 
thing. Upright and honest jurors, find a civil and obliging ver- 
dict against the printer! And when you have done so, march 
through the ranks of your fellow citizens to your own homes, and 
bear their looks as they pass along ; retire to the bosom of your 
families and your children, and, when you are presiding over the 
morality of the parental board, tell those infants who are to be 
the future men of Ireland, the history of this day. Form their 
young minds by your precepts, and confirm those precepts by 
your own example ; teach them how discreetly allegiance may 
be perjured on the table, or loyalty be foresworn in the jury- 
box ; and when you have done so, tell them the story of Orr ; 
tell them of his captivity, of his children, of his crime, of his 
hopes, of his disappointments, of his courage, and of his death ; 
and when you find your little hearers hanging from your lips, 
when you see their eyes overflow with sympathy and sorrow, 
and their young hearts bursting with the pangs of anticipated 
orphanage, tell them that you had the boldness and the justice 
to stigmatize the monster — who had dared to publish the trans- 
action ! Gentlemen, I believe I told you before, that the conduct 
of the viceroy was a small part indeed of the subject of this trial. 
If the vindication of his mere personal character had been, as it 
ought to have been, the sole object of this prosecution, I should 
have felt the most respectful regret at seeing a person of his high 
consideration come forward in a court of public justice, in one 
and the same breath to admit the truth, and to demand the pun- 
ishment of a publication like the present ; to prevent the chance 
he might have had of such an accusation being disbelieved, and 
by a prosecution like this to give to the passing stricture of a 
newspaper that life and body, and action and reality, that proves 
it to all mankind and makes the record of it indelible. Even as 
it is, I do own I feel the utmost concern that his name should 
have been soiled by being mixed in a question of which it is the 
mere pretext and scape-goat. Mr. Attorney-general was too 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 179 

wise to slate to you the real question or the object which he 
wished to be answered by your verdict. Do you remember that 
he was pleased to say that this publication was a base and foul 
misrepresentation of the virtue and wisdom of the government, 
and a false and audacious statement to the world that the king's 
government in Ireland was base enough to pay informers for 
taking away the lives of the people. When I heard this state- 
ment to-day, I doubted whether you were aware of its tendency 
or not. It is now necessary that I should explain it to you more 
at large. 

You cannot be ignorant of the great conflict between preroga- 
tive and privilege which hath convulsed the country for the last 
fifteen years ; when I say privilege, you cannot suppose that I 
mean the privileges of the house of commons ; I mean the privi- 
leges of the people. You are no strangers to the various modes 
by which the people laboured to approach their object. Dele- 
gations, conventions, remonstrances, resolutions, petitions to the 
parUament, petitions to the throne. It might not be decerns in 
this place to state to you with any sharpness the various modes 
of resistance that were employed on the other side ; but you, all 
of you seem old enough to remember the variety of acts of par- 
liament that have been made, by which the people were deprived, 
session after session, of what they had supposed to be the known 
and established fundamentals of the constitution; the right of 
public debate, the right of public petition, the right of bail, the 
right of trial, the right of arms for self-defence ; until at last, 
even the relics of popular privilege became superseded by mili- 
tary force ; the press extinguished ; and the state found its last 
entrenchment in the grave of the constitution. As little can you 
be strangers to the tremendous confederations of hundreds of 
thousands of our countrymen, of the nature and the objects of 
which such a variety of opinions have been propagated and en- 
tertained. 

The writer of this letter had presumed to censure the recal of 
Lord Fitzwilliam, as well as the measures of the present viceroy. 
Into this subject I do not enter ; but you cannot yourselves forget 
that the conciliatory measures of the former noble lord had pro- 
duced an almost miraculous unanimity in this country ; and much 
do I regret, and sure I am, that it is not without pain you can 
reflect, how unfortunately the conduct of his successor has ter- 



180 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

minated. His intentions might have been the best; I neither 
know them nor condemn them, but their terrible effects you can- 
not be blind to. Every new act of coercion has been followed 
by some new symptom of discontent, and every new attack pro- 
voked some new paroxysm of resentment or some new combina- 
tion of resistance. In this deplorable state of affairs, convulsed 
and distracted within, and menaced by a most formidable enemy 
from without, it was thought that public safety might be found 
in union and conciliation, and repeated applications were made 
to the parliament of this kingdom, for a calm inquiry into the 
complaints of the people ; these applications were made in vain. 
Impressed by the same motives, Mr. Fox brought the same sub- 
ject before the commons of England, and ventured to ascribe the 
perilous state of Ireland to the severity of its government. Even 
his stupendous abilities, excited by the liveliest sympathy with 
our suflerings, and animated by the most ardent zeal to restore 
the strength with the union of the empire, were repeatedly ex- 
erted without success. The fact of discontent was denied ; the 
fact of coercion was denied ; and the consequence was, the coer- 
cion became more implacable, and the discontent more threaten- 
ing and irreconcileable. A similar application was made in the 
beginning of this session in the lords of Great Britain, by our illus- 
trious countryman, of whom I do not wonder that my learned 
friend should have observed, how much virtue can fling pedigree 
into the shade ; or how much the transient honour of a body in- 
herited from man, is obscured by the lustre of an intellect derived 
from God. He, after being an eye-witness of this country, pre- 
sented the miserable picture of what he had seen ; and to the 
astonishment of every man in Ireland, the existence of those facts 
was ventured to be denied; the conduct of the present viceroy 
was justified and applauded ; and the necessity of continuing that 
conduct was insisted upon, as the only means of preserving the 
constitution, the peace, and the prosperity of Ireland. The mo- 
ment the learned counsel had talked of this publication as a false 
statement of the conduct of the government, and the condition of 
the people, no man could be at a loss to see that that awful ques- 
tion which had been dismissed from the commons of Ireland, and 
from the lords and commons of Great Britain, is now brought for- 
ward to be tried by a side wind, and in a collateral way, by a 
criminal prosecution. 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 181 

I tell you, therefore, gentlemen of the jury, it is not with re- 
spect to Mr. Orr that your verdict is now sought: you are called 
upon on your oaths to say, that the government is wise and mer- 
ciful, that the people are prosperous and happy, that military 
law ought to be continued, that the British constitution could not 
with safety be restored to this country, and that the statements 
of a contrary import by your advocates in either country were 
libellous and false. I tell you these are the questions, and I ask 
you, can you have the front to give the expected answer, in the 
face of a community who know the country as well as you do ? 
Let me ask you, how could you reconcile with such a verdict, 
the gaols, the tenders, the gibbets, the conflagrations, the mur- 
ders, the proclamations that we hear of every day in the streets, 
and see every day in the country ? What are the processions of 
the learned counsel himself, circuit after circuit ? Merciful God ! 
what is the state of Ireland, and where shall you find the 
wretched inhabitant of this land ? You may find him perhaps in 
gaol, the only place of security, I had almost said, of ordinary 
habitation ; you may see him flying by the conflagrations of his 
own dwelling ; or you may find his bones bleaching on the green 
fields of his country ; or he may be found tossing upon the sur- 
face of the ocean, and mingling his groans with those tempests, 
less savage than his persecutors, that drift him to a return- 
less distance from his family and his home. And yet, with these 
facts ringing in the ears and staring in the face of the prosecu- 
tors, you are called upon to say, on your oaths, that these facts do 
not exist. You are called upon, in defiance of shame, of truth, 
of honour, to deny the sufferings under which you groan, and to 
flatter the persecution that tramples you under foot. 

But the learned gentleman is further pleased to say, that the 
traverser has charged the government with the encouragement 
of informers. This, gentlemen, is another small fact that you 
are to deny at the hazard of your souls, and upon the solemnity 
of your oaths. You are upon your oaths to say to the sister coun- 
try, that the government of Ireland uses no such abominable in- 
struments of destruction as informers. Let me ask you honestly, 
what do you feel, when in my hearing, when in the face of this 
audience, you are called upon to give a verdict that every man 
of us, and every man of you, know by the testimony of your own 
eyes to be utterly and absolutely false ? I speak not now of the 



182 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP 

public proclamation of informers, with a promise of secrecy and 
of extravagant reward ; I speak not of the fate of those horrid 
wretches who have been so often transferred from the table to the 
dock, and from the dock to the pillory ; I speak of what your own 
eyes have seen day after day, during the course of this commission, 
from the box where you are now sitting ; the number of horrid 
miscreants who avowed upon their oaths that they had come 
from the very seat of government — from the castle, where they 
had been worked upon by the fear of death and the hopes of 
compensation, to give evidence against their fellows; that the 
mild and wholesome councils of this government are holden over 
these catacombs of living death, where the wretch that is buried 
a man, lies till his heart has time to fester and dissolve, and is 
then dug up a witness. 

Is this fancy, or is it fact 1 Have you not seen him, after his 
resurrection from that tomb, after having been dug out of the 
region of death and corruption, make his appearance upon the 
table, the living image of life and of death, and the supreme 
arbiter of both ? Have you not marked when he entered, how 
the stormy wave of the multitude retired at his approach ? Have 
you not marked how the human heart bowed to the supremacy 
of his power, in the undissembled homage of deferential horror ? 
How his glance, like the lightning of heaven, seemed to rive the 
body of the accused, and mark it for the grave, while his voice 
warned the devoted wretch of wo and death ; a death which no 
innocence can escape, no art elude, no force resist, no antidote 
prevent ; — there was an antidote — a juror's oath : but even that 
adamantine ohain, that bound the integrity of man to the throne 
of eternal justice, is solved and melted in the breath that issues 
from the informer's mouth ; conscience swings from her mooring, 
and the appalled and affrighted juror consults his own safety in 
the surrender of the victim : — 

Et qua sil:)i quisque timebat. 

Unius in miseri exitium coiiversa tuUere. 

Gentlemen, I feel I must have tired your patience ; but I have 
been forced into this length by the prosecutor, who has thought 
fit to introduce those extraordinary topics, and to bring a ques- 
tion of mere politics to trial under the form of a criminal prose- 
cution. I cannot say I am surprised this has been done, or that 



MR. PETER FINNERTY. 183 

you should be solicited by the same inducements, and from the 
same motives, as if your verdict was a vote of approbation. I do 
not wonder that the government of Ireland should stand appalled 
at the state to which we are reduced. I wonder not they should 
start at the public voice, and labour to stifle or to contradict it. 
I wonder not that at this arduous crisis when the very existence 
of the empire is at stake, and when its strongest and most pre- 
cious limb is not girt with the sword for battle, but pressed by 
the tourniquet for amputation ; when they find the coldness of 
death already begun in those extremities where it never ends, 
that they are terrified at what they have done, and wish to say 
to the surviving parties of that empire, " they cannot say that 
we did it." I wonder not that they should consider their con- 
duct as no immaterial question for a court of criminal jurisdic- 
tion, and wish anxiously, as on an inquest of blood, for the kind 
acquittal of a friendly jury. I wonder not that they should wish 
to close the chasm they have opened by flinging you into the 
abyss. But trust me, my countrymen, you might perish in it, 
but you could not close it ; trust me, if it is yet possible to close 
it, it can be done only by truth and honor ; trust me, that such 
an effect could no more be wrought by the sacrifice of a jury, 
than by the sacrifice of Orr. As a state measure, the one would 
be as unwise and unavailing as the other ; but while you are yet 
upon the brink, while you are yet visible, let me, before we part, 
remind you once more of your awful situation. — The law upon 
this subject gives you supreme dominion. Hope not for much 
assistance from his lordship. On such occasions, perhaps the duty 
of the court is to be cold and neutral. I cannot but admire the 
dignity he has supported during this trial ; I am grateful for his 
patience. But let me tell you, it is not his province to fan the 
sacred flame of patriotism in the jury box ; as he has borne with 
the little extravagances of the law, do you bear with the little 
failing of the press. Let me therefore remind you, that, though 
the day may soon come when our ashes shall be scattered before 
the winds of heaven, the memory of what you do cannot die ; it 
will carry down to your posterity your honour or your shame. 
In the presence and in the name of that ever living God, I do 
therefore conjure you to reflect, that you have your characters, 
your consciences, that you have also the character, perhaps the 
2 Z 



184 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF MR. FINNERTY. 

ultimate destiny of your country in your hands. In that awful 
name, I do conjure you to have mercy upon your country and 
yourselves, and so judge now, as you will hereafter be judged : 
and I do now submit the fate of my client, and of that country 
which we yet have in common, to your disposal. 

Mr. Finnerty was found guilty. 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

IN DEFENCE OF 

MR. OLIVER BOND, FOR HIGH TREASON. 
On Tuesday, July 24tn, 1798. 



ABSTRACT OF THE INDICTMENT. 

Mr. Oliver Bond, you stand indicted, for "not having the fear 
of God before your eyes, nor the duty of your allegiance con- 
sidering, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the 
devil, you did, with other false traitors, conspire and meet to- 
gether, and contriving and imagining with all your strength this 
kingdom to disturb, and to overturn by force of arms, &c. the 
government of this kingdom, on the 20th day of May, in the 
thirty-eighth year of the reign of the present king, in the parish 
of St. Michael the archangel, did conspire and meet together 
about the means of overturning the government ; and his majesty 
of and from his royal state, power and government of this coun- 
try to deprive and put ; and that you, Oliver Bond, with other 
false traitors, did meet together and make resolutions to procure 
arms and ammunition for the purpose of arming men to wage 
war against our sovereign lord the king ; and did conspire to 
overturn by force the lawful government of this kingdom, and to 
change by force the government thereof; and did assemble and 
meet together to raise a rebellion in this kingdom; to procure arms 
to aid and assist in said rebellion ; and that you, Oliver Bond, 
did aid and cause Thomas Reynolds to be a colonel in the coun- 
ty of Kildare, to aid and assist in the said rebellion, and did ad- 
minister unlawful oaths to said Thomas Reynolds, and to certain 
other persons, to be united Irishmen, for the purpose of over- 
turning by force the government of this kingdom ; and ycu, the 
said Oliver Bond, did collect sums of money to furnish arms and 
2 a 185 



186 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

ammunition to the persons in said rebellion, against the duty of 
your allegiance, contrary to his majesty's peace, his crown and 
dignity, and contrary to the form of the statute in that case 
made and provided. And whereas a public war, both by land 
and sea, is, and hath been carried on by persons exercising the 
powers of government in France ; you, the said Oliver Bond, not 
having the fear of God before your eyes, did aid and assist the 
French and men of France to invade this kingdom, to overturn 
by force the government of this kingdom, and to compass and 
imagine the death of the king, and so forth. On this indictment 
you, Oliver Bond, have been this day arraigned, and have plead- 
ed not guilty, and for trial have put yourself on God and your 
countrv." 



Mr. Curran. — My lords, and ge7itlemeji of the jury, I am coun- 
sel for the prisoner at the bar — it is my duty to lay his case be- 
fore you. It is a duty that at any time would be a pai?iful one 
to me, but at present peculiarly so ; having, in the course of this 
long trial, experienced great fatigue both of mind and of body, 
a fatigvie I have felt in common with the learned judges who pre- 
side on the bench, and with my brethren of the bar : I feel, as an 
advocate for my client, the duty of the awful obligation that has 
devolved upon me. — I do not mean, gentlemen of the jury, to di- 
late on my own personal fatigues, for I am not in the habit of 
considering my personal ill state of hea.lth, or the anxiety of my 
mind, in discharging my duty to clients in such awful situations 
as in the present momentous crisis ; I have not been in the habit, 
gentlemen of the jury, to expatiate to you on personal ill health ; 
in addressing myself to jurors on any common subject, I have not 
been in the habit of addressing myself to the interposition of the 
court, or to the good natured consideration of the jury, on be- 
half of my client. I have mentioned indeed my own enfeebled 
worn out body, and my worn out state of mind, not out of any 
paltry respect to myself, nor to draw your attention to myself, 
but to induce you to reflect upon this ; that in the weakness of 
the advocate, the case of my client, the prisoner at the bar, is 
not implicated ; for his case is so strong in support of his ifinoce?ice, 
that it is not to be weakened by the imbecility, or the fatigue of 
the advocate. 



MR. OLIVER BOND. • 187 

Gentlemen of the jury, I 'amcnt that this case has not been 
brought forward in a simple, and in the usual way, without any 
extraneous matter being introduced into it, as I think in justice, 
and as I think in humanity, it ought to have been. I lament 
that any little artifices should be employed upon sq great and so- 
lemn a case as this, more especially in desperate times, than upon 
more ordinary occasions ; and some allegations of criminality have 
been introduced, as to persons and things, that ought not in my 
opinion to have been adverted to in a case like this. What, for 
instance, has this case to do with the motion made by lord Moira 
in the house of lords in Ireland, in February last, or the acci- 
dental conversations with lord Edward Fitzgerald ? If you have 
a feeling for virtue, I trust that lord Moira will be revered as a 
character that adds a dignity to the peerage. What made that 
noble character forego his great fortune, quit his extensive de- 
mesnes, and the tranquillity of the philosophic mind, but in the 
great and glorious endeavour to do service to his country ? I must 
repeat, he is an honour to the Irish peerage. Let me ask, why 
was the name of lord Moira, or lord Wycombe (who happened 
to dine at sir Duke GifTard's) introduced into this trial ? what 
has that motion which lord Moira introduced in the house of 
lords to do with the trial of Mr. Oliver Bond on a charge of high 
treason ? Gentlemen of the jury, you have been addressed as 
against a person by whom a fire has been supposed to have been 
kindled, and this too at the period of its being extinguished. [Some 
ignorant persons in the crowded gallery having created some 
noise in the court, prevented the learned advocate a few minutes 
from proceeding. — The court said they would punish any person 
who dared to interrupt the counsel for the prisoner, and said they 
hoped ISlr. Curran would be able to proceed in stating the pris- 
oner's case.] Mr, Curran, in continuing — I have very little hope 
to be able to discharge my duty; but I impute the interruption to 
mere accident ; I cannot suppose it was levelled against me, but 
I am afraid it was excited by prejudice. — [The court remarked, 
they would maintain the peace and decorum of the court, and 
they would guard the prisoner from any prejudice. " Mr. Cur- 
ran, you will state the facts of the prisoner's case to the jury, and 
shall not be interrupted."] — Mr. Curran, in continuation. Gen- 
tlemen of the jury, I was cautioning you against being prejudiced 
against my unfortunate client ; I fear there is much reason why 



188 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

I should caution you against the influence of any prejudice against 
the prisoner at the bar. You are to decide on your verdict by 
the evidence given, and the evidence that on the part of the pris- 
oner will be laid before you ; and you will see the evidence does 
not support the prosecution. You will banish any prejudices, 
and let your verdict be the result of cool and deliberate investi- 
gation, and not given in the heat of the season when men's minds 
may be heated by the circumstances of the times. I shall lay 
before you the case of my client, to controvert the evidence given 
on the part of the prosecution, and shall offer to your considera- 
tion some observations in point of law, under the judicial control 
of the court as to matter of law. I will strip my client's case 
from the extraneous matter that has been attempted to be fast- 
ened on it. I feel, gentlemen, the more warm, when I speak to 
you in favour of my client's innocency, and to bring his innocency 
home to your judgments. I know the honesty and rectitude of 
your characters, and I know my client has nothing to fear from 
your understanding. It is my duty to state to you, we have evi- 
dence to prove to you, that the witness on the part of the prose- 
cutor is undeserving of credit, and it is my duty to apprize you, 
that it is your duty to examine into the moral character of the 
witness that has been produced ; and it is of the utmost concern 
you should do this, as your verdict is to decide on the life or death, 
the fame or dishonour of the prisoner at the bar. With respect 
to prosecutions brought forward by the state, I have ever been 
of opinion that the decision is to be by the jury ; and as to any 
matter of law, the jury do derive information from the court ; for 
jurors have^ by the constitution, a fixed and permanent power to 
decide on matter of fact, and the letter of the law the sovereign 
leaves to be expounded by the mouth of the king's judges. Some 
censure upon some former occasions hath fallen on former judges, 
from a breach of this doctrine. Upon a former occasion I differed in 
my opinion from the learned judge who then presided, as to what I 
conceived to be the law ; as to what is to be construed in the law 
of high treason, as to compassing or imagining the death of the 
king ; I am not ashamed of the opinion in a point of law I enter- 
tained, I never shall be ashamed of it. I. am extremely sorry I 
should differ from the bench in opinion on a point of law, but 
judges have had different opinions upon the same subject : where 
an overt-act is laid of compassing and imagining the death of the 



MR. OLIVER BOND. 189 

king, it does not mean in construction of law the natural dissolu- 
tion of the king ; but where there was not the fact acted upon, 
but confined merely to the inle?itio?i a man had ; the proof of 
such mte7itio?i must, according to lord Coke and sir M. Foster, be 
proved by tzoo witnesses in England ; the statute of Edward III. pro- 
vides against the event of the death of the king by any person levy- 
ing war, whereby his hfe might become endangered. The proof 
of such overt-act must in England be substantiated by two wit- 
nesses : how it comes not to be so settled and required in Ireland, 
is not accounted for. Before the statute of Edward III. the law 
relative to high treason was undefined, which tended to oppress 
and harass the people ; for, by the common law of England, it 
was formerly a matter of doubt, whether it was necessary to have 
two witnesses to prove an overt-act of high treason. Lord Coke 
says, that in England there must be two witnesses to prove an 
overt-act ; it seems he was afterwards of a contrary opinion ; but 
in the reign of William III. a statute passed, and by that statute 
it appears there must be izoo witnesses ; but when that statute came 
to be enacted here, the clause relative to there being two wit- 
nesses to an overt-act of high treason, is not made the law in Ire- 
land ; but why it was not required in Ireland is not explained. 
By the English act of WiUiam III. in England, the overt-act 
must be proved by two witnesses in England, but does not say in 
Irelaiid: but as the common law of England and the common law 
of Ireland is the same, the consciences of an Irish jury ought to 
be fully satisfied by the testimony of two witnesses to an overt-act ; 
but, on this point, however, some of the Irish judges are of opin- 
ion, that two witfiesses are not in Ireland required to substantiate 
an overt-act ; therefore their opinion must be acquiesced in. Let 
me suppose that Confucius, Plato, Solon or Tully, or any other 
great philosopher, was of opinion, on any particular point, as sup- 
pose for instance, that on the statute of William III. in order to 
have a just and equal trial there must be two witnesses to prove 
an overt-act ; Blackstone and Montesquieu are of opinion we 
should have the equal protection to our liberties; why then 
should not a jury in Ireland require the same evidence, i. e. two 
witnesses here, as well as in England 1 (The learned counsel refer- 
red to the statute of Eward III., act of king William III. on high 
treason, Blackstone's commentaries, Montesquieu's spirit of laws, 
Coke on Littleton, and sir Michael Foster's pleas of the crown.) 



190 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

Gentlemen of the jury, let me state to you in the clearest point 
of view, the defence of the prisoner at the har, and see what has 
been the nature of the evidence adduced. The prisoner at the 
bar is accused of compassing or imagining the death of the king, 
and of adhering to the king's enemies : the evidence against him 
is parol and written evidence. Now, gentlemen of the jury, I will 
venture to observe to you, that as to the written evidence, if suf- 
fered to go before you by the court, it is only as evidence at large ; 
but as to the credibility of it, that is for you to decide upon. — 
Mr. Reynolds, in his parol testimony, has sworn, that he was made 
an united Irishman by the prisoner at the bar. — Mr. Reynolds 
says, he was sworn to what he considered to be the objects of 
that society : he stated them to you ; but whether true or false 
is for you to determine, by the credit you may give to his testi- 
mony. This is the third time Mr. Reynolds has appeared in a 
court of justice, to prosecute the prisoners. He says, the objects 
of the united Irishmen are to overturn the present government, 
and to establish a republican form of government in its stead, 
and to comfort and albet the French, on their invading this king- 
dom, should such an event take place. — You have heard his testi- 
mony : let me ask, do you think him incapable of being a villain ? 
do you tliink him to be a villain ? you observed with what kind 
of pride he gave his testimony — do you believe his evidence by 
the solemn oath that you have taken ? or do you believe it was 
a blasted perjury ? can you give credit to any man of a blasted 
character 1 — It has been the misfortune of many former jurors to 
have given their verdict founded upon the evidence of a perjured 
witness, and on their death bed they repented of their credulity, 
in convicting a man upon false testimony ; the history of former 
ages is replete with such conduct, as may be seen in the state 
trials, in the case of Lord Kimbolton and Titus Oates — the then 
jurors convicted that nobleman, but some time after his death, 
the jurors discovered they had given implicit credit to a witness 
unworthy of it ; and the lawyers of those times might have said, 
" I thank God they have done the deed." — Does not the history 
of human infirmity give many instances of this kind ? Gentlemen, 
let me bring you more iminediately to the case before you ; had 
we no evidence against Reynolds but his own solitary evidence ; 
from the whole of his evidence, you cannot establish the guilt of 
the prisoner at the bar ; take the whole of his evidence into your 



MR. OLIVER BOND. 191 

consideration, it may appear he is unworthy of credit. He told 
you he got information from M'Cann on the Sunday morning, 
that the meeting was to be on Monday morning at ten o'clock. — 
Reynolds goes immediately to Mr. Cope and gives him that in- 
formation. — On Sunday afternoon he goes to lord Edward Fitz- 
gerald, and shows him the orders issued by Captain Saurin to 
the lawyers' corps : then said lord Edward, I fear government 
intend to arrest me, I will go to France, and hasten them to in- 
vade this country. — Government has no information of the meet- 
ing of the provincial delegates at Bond's ; no, no, says Reynolds, 
that is impossible. — Reynolds wrote to Bond he could not attend 
the meeting, as his wife was ill ; Reynolds did not go to the meet- 
ing. — Bond was arrested on the Monday morning ; on Monday eve- 
ning, at eight at night, Reynolds goes to lord Edward in Aungier 
street, met him, and goes again to him the next night, and lord 
Edward conversed with Reynolds about his [lord Edvi'ard,] going 
to France. — Reynolds then went to Kildare : he gave the most 
solemn assurance to the delegates at a meeting there, that he 
never gave information of the meeting at Bond's : — now see how 
many oaths Reynolds has taken : he admits he took two of the 
oaths of the obligations to the society of united Irishmen. He 
told you lord Edward advised him to accept of being a colonel 
of Kildare united Irishmen's army, and yet he says, he afterwards 
went to Bond's, and Bond advised Reynolds to be a colonel. It 
appeared in evidence that Reynolds was treasurer ; he took two 
more oaths, one as colonel, and one as treasurer, and he took the 
oath of allegiance also ; and he took oath to the truth of his tes- 
timony, at the two former trials and at this ; on which do you 
give him credit ? — Gentlemen, in order to narrow the question 
under your consideration, as to what Reynolds said, relative to 
lord Edward's conversation, is totally out of this case ; it can have 
no weight at all on the trial of Mr. Bond for high treason, in the 
finding of your verdict. — How, or in what manner, is the prison- 
er at the bar to be affected by it ? I submit to your lordship that 
the declarations of lord Edward to Reynolds, when Bond was not 
present, is not attachable to the prisoner. — Mr. Reynolds has 
given you a long account of a conversation he had with Mr. Cope, 
relative to the proceedings of the society of united Irishmen ; and 
Mr. Cope said, if such a man could be found, as described by Mr. 
Reynolds, he would come forward and give information, he would 
3A 



192 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

deserve the epithet of saviour of his country : — thus hy Reynolds's 
evidence, it would seem that Mr. Cope was the little pony of re- 
pentance to drive away the gigantic crimesof the colossus Reynolds : 
— but remember said Mr. Reynolds, though I give information I 
won't sacrifice my morality ; I won't come forward to prosecute 
any united Irishman. No, no ; like a bashful girl, higgling about 
the price of her virginity, I am determined, says Reynolds, to pre- 
serve my character — I will give the communiations, but do not 
think I will descend to be an informer — I will acquaint you of 
every thing against the united Irishmen, but I must preserve my 
credit — I tell you the design of the united Irishmen is to overturn 
the constitution — I will lead you to the threshold of discovery, 
but I won't name any price of reward — pray don't mention it at 
all. Says Mr. Cope, a man would deserve a thousand, or fifteen 
hundred a year and a seat in parliament, or any thing, if he 
could give the information you mention. — No such thing is re- 
quired, no such thing, says Reynolds — you mistake me ; 1 will 
have nothing in the world but merely a compensation for losses — 
do you think I would take a bribe ? I ask only of you to give 
me leave to draw a little bit of a note on you for five hundred 
guineas, only by way of indemnity, that is all, merely for indem- 
nity of losses I have sustained, or am liable to sustain. Gentle- 
men of the jury, don't you see the vast distinction between a bribe 
and gratification? What says father Foigard? Consider my 
conscience : do you think I would take a bribe 1 it would grieve 
my conscience if I was to take a bribe — to be a member of par- 
liament and declare for the ayes or the noes — I will accept of no 
bribe — I will only take a Uttle indemnity for claret that may be 
spilt ; for a little furniture that may be destroyed ; for a little 
wear and tear, for boots and for shoes, for plate destroyed ; for 
defraying the expenses of some pleasurable jaunts, when out of 
this country ; for if I become a public informer against the united 
Irishmen, and should continue here for some time, I may chance 
at some time to be killed by some of them — for I have sworn to 
be true to them, and I also took the oath of allegiance to be true 
to my sovereign — I have taken all sorts of oaths ; if I frequent 
the company of those who are loyal to the king, they will de- 
spise the man who broke his oath of allegiance ; and between the 
loyalists and the united Irishmen, I may chance to be killed. — As 
I am in the habit of living in the world, says Mr. Reynolds to 



MR. OLIVER BOND. 193 

Mr. Cope, you will give me leave to draw a bit of paper on you, 
only for three hundred guineas at present ; it will operate like 
a bandage to a sore leg : though it won't cure the sore, or the 
rottenness of the bone, it may hide it from the public view. — I 
will, savs Mr. Reynolds, newly be baptized for a draft of three 
hundred guineas ; and become a public informer for a further 
bit of paper, only for another two hundred guineas ; yet I trust 
you will excuse me, I will not positively take any more. — He 
might, I imagine, be compared to a bashful girl, and say. What, 
shall the brutal arms of man attack a country maid, and she not 
stipulate for full wages — when her gown shortens, and her apron 
bursts asunder, and she sinks to the view of public prostitution ? 
perhaps he practised upon her virtue, when she thought he was 
gaining the affections of that innocent dupe in private. — Do you 
think that Reynolds would touch a bribe, and become an in- 
former ? — no, no ; he said he would be no informer. But did he not 
consent to do a little business in private — and did he not get 
money for it 1 Perhaps he said, I thought to be no villain — I 
would not have the world think me to be a villain ; yet as I can 
confide in myself, why should I mind what the world says of me, 
though it should call me a villain 1 but is it not a real fact ? — 
Even though I should become the talk of all the porter-houses, 
though I should become the talk of all the tea-tables, yet perjury 
is not brought home to me. — No, no human being has knowledge 
of what is rankling within ? Has it not been said, I was an 
honest man to come upon the public board as a public informer ? 
they did call me an honest man, and a worthy, a respectable in- 
former, and thus my character is at bay.— The world indeed heard 
of the progress of these crimes, and that I was unfortunately an 
united Irishman. — He told you there was a provificial meeting of 
delegates, but he has not ventured to tell you where the pro- 
vincial committee met ; — he has simply said, there was a provincial 
committee. — It was a question of great concern ; I have doubts 
about it. — It is not stated to me what these important consulta- 
tions were about. — From M'Cann he heard that a baronial meet- 
ing was to be at Bond's on the 12th of March, and that there 
was material business to transact, and desired Reynolds to attend 
— that is all that Reynolds heard from M'Cann, and M'Cann is 
now no more, and this part of the case is in doubt and obscurity. 
For my part 1 am not satisfied that any thing criminal did pass 
26 



194 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

at the meeting at Bond's on the 12th of March — no man can say 
so — on the evidence produced, they do not say that, — they only 
suppose there was. Was the jury to judge of their own present 
view, I do not think they would come justly, with their verdict 
of condemnation. The question is not, whether there was any 
meeting at Bond's ; but, what was the object of the meeting ? — 
Bond was in the ware-house in the custody of the guard : after- 
wards he came up to the room with Mr. Swan. — At Bond's there 
was a meeting of the united Irishmen ; and though Bond was not 
taken in that room, yet Bond's charge is mixed with the guilt of 
that meeting. — The overt-act in the indictment is, of conspiring 
to levy war, &c. It is material to observe, in this part of the case, 
it was a,6are co7ispiracy to levy war,- it is not, as I conceive, high 
treason; the bare intention does not amount to compassing or 
imagining the death of the king — it is not adhering to the king^s 
enemies ; under certain circumstances, this is not high treason, 
of compassing the death of the king. — This is the great 
hinge, as I apprehend, in this case. Gentlemen, what was the 
evidence given ? that there was a meeting, for a dangerous pur- 
pose. — Mr. Cann said, there was to be a meeting of the delegates 
at Bond's on the 12th of March ; he did not tell Reynolds the 
purport of that meeting — therefore, gentlemen, my objection is, 
was that a provincial meeting ? it rests on that evidence of the 
informer, and no other witness. It was M'Cann told Reynolds, 
you must be at the convention on the 12th of March, to compass 
the death of the king, and to overturn the government ; — but 
Bond did not tell him any such thing : Bond only said, M'Cann 
was able to give information of what was going forward at that 
meeting; but Bond knew nothing about it — though admitting a 
meeting was held in Bond's house for a guilty purpose, yet Bond 
might be perfectly innocent; he was not in the room till Mr. Swan 
came: there was to be a watch-word, is M'Cann here? from 
thence it would seem it was a meeting at M'Cann's suggestion. 
Mr. Bond probably did not know the motive, when he gave the use 
of the room ; for there was not one word of conversation between 
Bond and Reynolds. — Reynolds says, M'Cann told him the ivatch- 
word. M'Cann did not get the watch-word from Bond, the prisoner 
at the bar — the watch-word was, is M'Cann here ? it was for the 
admission of no person, that M'Cann did not know ; it had no re- 
lation to Mr. Bond. Has this no weight with you, gentlemen of 



MR. OLIVER BOND. 195 

the jury ? do you feel anxious to investigate the truth ? If you 
believe Reynolds, the meeting v^^as for the worst purpose, but 
was it with the knowledge of Bond 1 for Bond said to Reynolds, 
Ica7i give you no information, go to M'Cann he can iriform you — 
Upon the evidence tlierefore of Reynolds rests this man's life, for 
the written evidence found in the room cannot, in my apprehen- 
sion, affect Bond ; he was not i?i the room; if you, as no doubt you 
will, be of opinion. Bond was not in the room where the papers 7vere 
foufid. — There is not any evidence of the conversation before 
Swan came, and he found on the table a paper written on, and the 
ink not dry, " /, A. B. zvas duly elected" — it was notfoimd upon tike 
prisoner at the bar: — the papers found might affect the persons in 
the room — but at the time of the seizure of the papers. Bond was 
in the ware-house in custody of sergeant Dugan, and was not 
brought up stairs until after the arrest. The papers found upon 
Bond might be read in evidence against him, but I conceive not 
those found in the room. What was the intention of mentioning 
the letter from Reynolds, found on the prisoner at the bar ? It 
was stated, but not read in evidence, merely to apologize for 
Reynolds's not attending the meeting on the 12th of March : 
Reynolds says he got it again, and burnt it. — Reynolds did 
not pretend to state to you, he knew from Bond, what the ob- 
ject of the meeting was; — and it is material to observe, that 
Bond's name was not found entered in the list of the persons 
who made returns, and attended the meeting : — Bond has been 
resident in this city twenty years ; in your walks of life, gentle- 
men of the jury, you never heard any thing to his prejudice, be- 
fore this charge. — I know my duty to my client, and must tell 
you, if you have had prejudices, I know you will discard them ; 
I am not paying you any compliment ; I have spoken under the 
feelings of an Irishman, during the course of these trials ; I have 
endeavoured to speak to your understandings ; I have not ven- 
tured to entreat you, on behalf of my client, because I am sure 
you will give your justice and your merits free operation, in 
your minds and consciences, at this trial. I am sure you will try 
the cause fairly, and admit every circumstance into your re- 
flections ; in a case between the crown and the prisoner, I have 
not ventured to address you on the public feelings, at this import- 
ant crisis ; you will preserve the subject for the sake of the law, 
and preserve the law for the sake of the crown. You are to 



196 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP 

decide by your sober and deliberate understandings, and hold the 
balances equal between the crown and the subject, for you are 
called upon to pronounce your sentence of condemnation or ac- 
quittal of the prisoner at the bar. — If you should be mistaken in 
your verdict, it cannot shake the safety of the state ; you are 
called upon, with the less anxiety, because whichever way your 
verdict may be, you are not to be told, remember the safety of 
your king, or your own safety : you are to have in recollection 
your solemn oath, to decide according to the evidence, and give 
such a verdict, as may always be satisfactory to your consciences, 
to the last moment of your existence. The court will tell you, 
it is your province to decide on matter of fact ; and as to opinion 
on matter of law, the court will explain that to you. Your ver- 
dict can never die. As to my opinions of the law, whatever they 
may be, I shall never have an opportunity of uttering to you 
again : your verdict will stamp infamy on the prisoner, or sup- 
port the throne of the law ; I need not remind you that the pre- 
sent moment is awful. — My friends, if you suffer your consciences 
to be influenced, to be degraded, into opinions of the conse- 
quences of your verdict ; you are bound to decide by the evi- 
dences, the glorious privilege of trial by jury ! ! ! If martial law 
must cut the throat of brotherly affection, the necessity of it will 
cease, for verdicts of honest jurors will restore your country to 
peace and tranquillity ; and the liberties of your country will 
by that means be secured ; the supreme government of a nation 
be protected and supported, whatever the form of that government 
may be : let me however ask, is there no species of law to be i-e- 
sorted to but terror ? let me observe to you, that the moral law 
is destroyed, when it is stained with the effusion of blood ; and it 
is much to be regretted, when the terrors of the criminal law 
are obliged to be resorted to, to enforce obedience to the common 
law of the land, by the people ; for the sword may cover the land 
with millions of deluded men. — Is it become necessary to hurl 
destruction round the land, till it shivers into a thousand particles, 
to the destruction of all moral law, and all moral obligations ? — 
By the common law of the land, no subject is to be deprived of 
life, but by a trial by his fellow-subjects ; but in times when a 
rebellion prevails in any country, many suffer without the sem- 
blance of a trial by their equals. From the earliest period of 
history down to the present time, there have been seen in some 



MR. OLIVER BOND. 197 

parts of the earth, instances where jurors have done little more 
than record the opinions given to them by the then judges ; but 
it is the last scene of departing liberty. I have read that, in the 
period of the rebellion, in the last century in England, that jurors 
on trials by the common law of the land, have been swayed in 
their determination by the unsupported evidence of an informer, 
and after-times have proved their verdict was ill founded, and 
the innocency of the convicted persons had afterwards appeared ; 
trials on charges of high treason are of the utmost moment to the 
country, not merely with respect to any individual, but of the 
importance it is to the public that they should know the blessings 
of trial by jury, and that the jurors will solely determine on their 
verdict by the evidences, and maturely weigh the credll of the 
wit?iesses against any prisoner. — Some of these trials of late date 
some of you have been present at ; and you know that the object 
of the court and the jurors is to investigate the truth from the 
evidences produced, and the jurors are sworn to decide, and to 
bring in a true verdict according to the evidences. One witness 
has been examined on this trial, which I think does not deserve 
credit ; but it is you who are the sole judges whom you will give 
credit to ; but though you know this witness has given evidence 
on two former trials, and though the then jury did give credit to 
his testimony, yet you are not to determine on your verdict on 
the faith or precedent of any former jurors ; but you are to be 
solely guided by your own consciences : and you will observe we 
have had here two more witnesses to impeach the character of 
Mr. Reynolds, that were not produced on the former trials ; and 
you will, no doubt, throw out of your minds whatever did not 
come this day before you in evidence, on the part of the prosecu- 
tion ; and which will come before you on part of the prisoner's 
defence. You will find your verdict flowing from conscious in- 
tegrity, and from the feelings of honourable minds ; notwith- 
standing the evidence of the witness, Mr. Reynolds, who has been 
examined upon the table, and whose testimony I need not re- 
peat to you : perhaps you may be inclined to think, he is a per- 
jured witness ; perhaps you will not believe the story he has told 
against the prisoner at the bar, and of his own turpitude : you 
will do well to consider it was through a perjured witness, that 
a Russel and a Sidney were convicted in the reign of James II. 
— If juries are not circumspect to determine onhj by the evi- 



198 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

dences adduced before them, and not from any extraneous mat- 
ter, nor from the slightest breath of prejudice, then what will 
become of our boasted trial by jury ; then what will become 
of our boasted constitution of Ireland ? When former jurors de- 
cided contrary to evidence, it created great effusion of blood in 
former times. Let me ask, will you, gentlemen, give a verdict 
through infirmity of body, or through misrepresentations, or 
through ignorance ? you by your verdict will give an answer to 
this. — Gentlemen of the jury, you will weigh in your minds, that 
many inhuman executions did take place in former times ; though 
the then accused underwent the solemnity of a trial, the verdicts 
of those jurors are not in a state of annihilation, for they remain 
on the page of hi-story, as a beacon to future jurors ; the judges 
before whom the then accused were tried, have long since paid 
the debt of nature ; they cannot now be called to account, why 
they shrunk from their duty. — I call upon you, gentlemen of the 
jury, to be firm in the exercise of the solemn duty you are en- 
gaged in ; should you be of opinion to bring in a verdict of con- 
demnation against my unfortunate client, for myself I ought to 
care nothing, what impressions may actuate your minds to find 
such a verdict ; it little regardeth me, but it much regardeth 
you, to consider what kind of men you condemn to die ; and, be- 
fore you write their bloody sentence, consider maturely whether 
the charge against the prisoner is fully proved. If you should, on 
the evidences you have heard, condemn the prisoner to death, 
and afterwards repent it, I shall not live among you to trace any 
proof of your future repentance. — I said I rose to tell you what 
evidences we had to produce on behalf of my client, the prisoner 
at the bar ; we shall lay evidence before you, from which you 
can infer, that the witness produced this day was a perjured 
man ; we have only to show to you, as honest men, that the 
witness is not deserving of credit on his oath ; we have nothing 
more to offer on behalf of my client, the prisoner at the bar. — It 
is your province to deliberate in your consciences on what evi- 
dence you have heard, and whether you will believe the witness 
you have heard, on his oath or not. — Let me ask, will you, upon 
the evidence you have heard, take away the life of a man of this 
kind, as the prisoner at the bar, from his wife and from his little 
children for ever ? I told you, I was to state to you the evidences 
which we had to bring forward on behalf of my unfortunate 



MR. OLIVER BOND. 199 

client ; I will tell you it is to discredit the testimony of Mr. Rey- 
nolds ; when you have heard our evidences to this point, I cannot 
suppose you will give your verdict to doom to death the unhappy 
and unfortunate prisoner at the bar, and entail infamy on his 
posterity. We will also produce respectable witnesses to the 
hitherto unimpeached character of the prisoner at the bar, that 
he was a man of fair honest character ; you, gentlemen of the 
jury, have yourselves known him a number of years in this city : 
let me ask you, do you not know that the prisoner at the bar 
has always borne the character of a man of integrity, and of 
honest fame ; and, gentlemen of the jury, I call upon you to 
ans^ver my question by your verdict. — I feel myself imprest with 
the idea in my breast, that you will give your verdict of ac- 
quittal of the prisoner at the bar ; and that by your verdict you 
will declare on your oaths, that you do not believe one syllable 
that Mr. Reynolds has told you. Let me entreat you to put in 
one scale, the base, the attainted, the unfounded, the perjured 
witness ; and in the opposite scale, let me advise you to put the 
testimony of the respectable witnesses produced against Mr. 
Reynolds, and the witnesses on the prisoner's hitherto unim- 
peached character ; and you will hold the balances with justice, 
tempered with mercy, as your consciences in future will approve. 
Let me depart from the scene of beholding human misery, should 
the life of my client by your verdict be forfeited ; should he live 
by your verdict of acquittal, he would rank as the kindest fa- 
ther, and protector of his little children, as the best of husbands, 
and of friends, and ever maintain that irreproachable character 
he has hitherto sustained in private life. — Should our witnesses 
not exculpate the prisoner from the crimes charged on him, to 
the extent as charged in the indictment, I pray to God to give 
you the judgment and understanding to acquit him. Do not 
imagine I have made use of any arguments to mislead your con- 
sciences, or to distress your feelings : no — but if you conceive a 
doubt in your minds, that the prisoner is innocent of the crime 
of high treason, I pray to God to give you firmness of mind to 
acquit him. I now leave you, gentlemen of the jury, to the free 
exercise of your own judgments in the verdict you may give. I 
have not, by way of supplication, addressed you in argument ; I 
do not wish to distress your feelings from supplications ; it would 
be most unbefitting to your candour and understanding ; — you 
3B 



200 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF MR. BOND. 

are bound by your oaths to find a true verdict according to the 
evidence ; and you do not deserve the station of jurors, the con- 
stitution has placed you in, if you do not discharge the trust the 
constitution has vested in you, to give your verdict freely and 
indilferently, according to your consciences. 

Mr. Bond w^as found guilty. 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

IN DEFENCE OF 
LADY PAMELA FITZGERALD, AND HER INFANT CHILDREN, 

AT THE BAK OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN IRELAND. 



Lord Edward Fitzgerald having died in prison, before trial, 
of the wound he received in resisting the person who apprehended 
him, a bill was brought into parliament to attaint him after his 
death. Mr. Curran was heard at the bar of the House of Com- 
mons against the bill, as counsel for the widow and infant chil- 
dren of that nobleman, (the eldest of whom was only four years 
old,) on which occasion Mr. Curran delivered the following 
speech. 

Mr. Curran. — Mr. Curran said, he rose in support of a peti- 
tion presented on behalf of lord Henry Fitzgerald, brother of 
the deceased lord Edward Fitzgerald, of Pamela his widow, Ed- 
ward his only son and heir, an infant of the age of four years, 
Pamela his eldest daughter, of the age of two years, and Lucy his 
youngest child, of the age of three months, against the bill of at- 
tainder then before the committee. The bill of attainder, he said, 
had formed the division of the subject into two parts. It asserted 
the fact of the late lord Edward's treason ; and, secondly, it pur- 
ported to attaint him, and to vest his property in the crown. He 
would follow the same order. As to the first bill, he could not 
but remark upon the strange looseness of the allegation : the bill 
stated that he had, during his life, and since the first of Novem- 
ber last, committed several acts of high treason, without stating 
what, or when, or where, or with whom : it then affected to state 
the different species of treason of which he had been guilty, 
namely, conspiring to levy war, and endeavouring to persuade 
2 c 201 



202 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP 

the enemies of (lie king to invade the country ; the latter alle- 
gation was not attempted to be proved ! the conspiring, without 
actually levying war, was clearly no high treason, and had been 
repeatedly so determined. Upon this previous and important 
question, namely the guilt of lord Edward, (and without the full 
proof of which no punishment can be just,) he had been asked by 
the committee, if he had any defence to go into ? he was con- 
founded by a question which he could not answer ; but upon a 
very little reflection, he saw in that very confusion the most con- 
clusive proof of the injustice of the bill. For what, he said, can 
be more flagrantly unjust, than to inquire into a fact, of the truth 
or falsehood of which, no human being can have knowledge, save 
the informer who comes forward to assert it. Sir, said he, I now 
answer the question. I have no defensive evidence ! I have no 
case ! it is impossible I should, — I have often of late gone to the 
dungeon of the captive ; but never have I gone to the grave of 
the dead to receive instructions for his defence — nor in truth 
have I ever before been at the trial of a dead man 1 I offer 
therefore no evidence upon this inquiry ; against the perilous ex- 
ample of which, I do protest on behalf of the public^ and against 
the cruelty and iiijustice of which I do protest in the name of the 
dead father, whose memory is sought to be dishonoured, and of his 
infant orphans, whose bread is sought to be taken away. Some 
observations, and but a few, upon the assertions of Reynolds, I 
will make. [Mr. Curran then observed upon the credit of Rey- 
nolds by his own confession,] I do verily believe him in that in- 
stance, even though I have heard him assert it upon his oath, by 
his own confession, an informer, and a bribed informer ; — a man 
whom even respectable witnesses had sworn in a court of justice 
upon their oaths not to be credible on his oath ; — a man upon 
whose single testimony no jury ever did, nor ever ought, to pro- 
nounce a verdict of guilty ; — a kind of man to whom the law re- 
sorts with abhorrence and from necessity, in order to set the cri- 
minal against the crime, but who is made use of by the law upon 
the same reasons that the most noxious poisons are resorted to in 
medicine. If such the man, look for a moment at his story ; he 
confines himself to mere conversation only, with a dead man. He 
ventures not to introduce any third person, Uving or even dead ! he 
ventures to state no act whatever done ; he wishes indeed to as- 
perse the conduct of lady Edward Fitzgerald, but he well knew, 



LADY PAMELA FITZGERALD. 203 

that, even were she in the country, she could not be adduced as 
a witness to disprove him. 

See therefore if there be any one assertion to which credit 
can be given, except this, that he has sworn, and foresworn ; that 
he is a traitor ; that he has received five hundred guineas to be 
an informer, and that his general reputation is to be unworthy 
of credit. 

As to the papers, it was sufficient to say, that no one of them, 
nor even all of them, were even asserted to contain any positive 
proof against lord Edward ; that the utmost that could be dedu- 
ced from them was nothing more than doubt or conjecture, which, 
had lord Edward been living, might have been easily explained, 
to explain which was now impossible, and upon which to found 
a sentence of guilt would be contrary to every rule of justice or 
humanity. 

He would therefore pass to the second question. Was this 
bill of attainder warranted by the principles of reason 1 the 
principles of forfeiture in the law of treason? or the usage of 
parliament in bills of attainder ? The subject was of necessity 
very long ; it had nothing to attract attention, but much to repel 
it. But he trusted the anxiety of the committee for justice, not- 
withstanding any dullness either in the subject or in the speaker, 
would secure to him their attention. Mr. Curran then went into 
a minute detail of the principles of the law of forfeiture for high 
treason. The laws of the Persians, and Macedonians, extended 
the punishment of the traitor to the extinction of all his kindred. 
That law subjected the property and life of every man to the 
most complicated despotism, because the loyalty of every indi- 
vidual of his kindred was a matter of wild caprice, as the will of 
the most arbitrary despot could be. 

This principle was never adopted in any period of our law : at 
the earliest times of the Saxons, the law of treason acted directly 
only on the person of the criminal ; it took away from him what 
he actually had to forfeit — his life and property. But as to his 
children, the law disclaimed to affect them directly ; they suf- 
fered, but they suffered by a necessary consequence of their 
father's punishment, which the law could not prevent and never 
directly intended. It took away the inheritance, because the 
criminal, at the time of taking it away, had absolute dominion 
over it, and might himself have conveyed it away from his family. 



204 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

This, he said, was proved by the instances of additional fees, at 
the common law, and estates tail since the statute de Bonis. In 
the former case, the tenant did not forfeit, until he had acquired 
an absolute dominion over the estate by the performance of the 
condition. Neither in the latter case was the estate tail made 
forfeitable, until the tenant in tail had become enabled in two 
ways to obtain the absolute dominion ; by a common recovery 
or by a fine. Until then the issue in tail, though not only the 
children of the tenant, but taking from him his estate by descent, 
could not be disinherited by his crime. A decisive proof, that 
even the early law of treason never intended to extend the pun- 
ishment of the traitor to his children as such ; but even this di- 
rect punishment upon the traitor himself, was to take effect only 
upon a condition suggested by the unalterable rules of natural 
justice, namely, a judgment founded upon conviction, against 
which he might have made his defence, or upon an outlawry, 
where he refused to abide his trial. In that case he was pun- 
ished, because during his life the fact was triable ; because during 
his life the punishment could act directly upon his person ; be- 
cause during his life the estate was his to convey, and therefore 
his to forfeit. 

But if he died without attainder, a fair trial was impossible, 
because a fair defence was impossible ; a direct punishment upon 
his person was impossible, because he could not feel it ; and a 
confiscation of his estate was equally impossible, because it was 
then no longer his, but was then vested in his heir, to whom it 
belonged by a title as good as that by which it had ever be- 
longed to him in his life time, namely, the known law of the 
country. 

As to a posthumous forfeiture of lands, that appears to have 
been attempted by inquest after death. But so early as the 
eighth of Edward the third, the legality of such presentments was 
disallowed by the judges. And there is no lawyer at this day 
who can venture to deny, that since the twenty-fifth and thirty- 
fourth of Edward the third, no estate of inheritance can regularly 
be forfeited save by attainder in the life of the party ; therefore 
the law of the country being, that unless the descent was in- 
terrupted by an actual attainder in the life time of the criminal, 
it became vested in the heir. The moment it did descend, the 
heir became seized by a title the most favoured in law. He 



LADY PAMELA FITZGERALD. 205 

might perhaps have been considered as a purchaser for the most 
valuable consideration, his mother's marriage, of which he was 
the issue. Why there was posthumous attainder excluded from 
the protective law of treason ? Why has it never since been 
enacted by a prospective law ? clearly for this reason ! that in 
its own nature it is inhuman, impolitic, and unjust. 

But it is said, this may be done by a bill of attainder ; that 
the parliament is omnipotent, and therefora may do it ; and that 
it is a proceeding familiar to our constitution. As to the first, it 
could not be denied that the parliament was in the power of 
the country ; but an argument from the existence of a power to 
the exercise of it in any particular instance, is ridiculous and ab- 
surd. From such an argument it would follow, that it must do 
whatever it is able to do ; and that it must be stripped of the 
best of all power, the power of abstaining from what is wrong. 

Mr. Curran then endeavoured to show that such a bill ought 
not to pass : first, because every argument against the justice or 
the policy of a prospective, was tenfold strong against a retro- 
spective law. Because every ex post facto law was in itself an 
exercise of despotical power ; that when it altered the law of 
property it was peculiarly dangerous ; that when it punished 
the innocent for the guilty it was peculiarly unjust ; that when 
it affected to do that which the criminal, as it then stood, could 
not do, it acted peculiarly against the spirit of the constitution, 
which was to contract and restrain penal law by the strictest 
construction, and not to add to it by vindictive innovation. But, 
he said, he was warranted to go much farther upon the authority 
of the British legislature itself, and to say, that the principle of 
forfeiture, even in the prospective law, was altogether repugnant 
to the spirit of the British constitution. 

The statutes of Anne and of George the second, have declared, 
that after the death of the Pretender and of his sons, no such for-, 
feiture ought nor should exist. In favour of that high authority, 
every philosophical and theoretic writer, baron Montesquieu, 
the marquis Beccaria, and many others might be cited. Against 
it, no one writer of credit or character, that had come to his 
hands. Of the late Mr. Yorke he did not mean to speak with 
disrespect ; he was certainly a man of learning and genius ; but 
it must be observed, he wrote for a party and for a purpose ; he 
wrote against the repeal of the law of forfeiture more than for 



206 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

its principle ; of that principle he expressly declines entering in- 
to a direct defence. But for the extending that principle farther 
than it is already law, the slightest insinuation cannot be found in 
his treatise. 

But, said Mr. Curran, it is asserted to be the usage of the con- 
stitution in both countries. Of bills of attainder, he said, the in- 
stances were certainly many, and most numerous in the worst 
times, and rising above each other in violence and injustice. The 
most tolerable of them was that which attainted the man who 
fled from justice, which gave him a day to appear, had he cho- 
sen to do so, and operated as a legislative outlawry. That kind 
ofact had been passed, though but rarely, within the present 
century. There have been many acts of attainder when the 
party was willing but not permitted to appear and take his trial. 
In these two kinds of bills of attainder, however, it is to be ob- 
served, that they do not any violence to the common law, by the 
declaring of a new crime or a new punishment, but only by 
creating a new jurisdiction, and a new order of proceeding. Of 
the second kind that has been mentioned, many instances are to 
be found in the violent reigns of the Plantagenets and the Tudors, 
and many of them revised by the wisdom of cooler and juster 
times. Of such unhappy monuments of human frailty, lord Coke 
said, " aiiferal oblivio, si noti silentium tegat." 

I beg leave, said Mr. Curran, to differ in that from the learned 
judge : I say, let the record upon which they are written be in- 
delible and immortal : 1 say, let the memory that preserves them 
have a thousand tongues to tell them ; and when justice, even 
late and slow, shall have robbed their fellow principle of life, let 
them be interred i.i a monument of negative instruction to pos- 
terity for ever. 

A third kind of bill of attainder might be found, which for the 
first time declared the law, and attainted the criminal upon it ; 
such was the attainder of Strafford. A fourth, which did not 
change the law as to the crime, but as to the evidence upon 
which it was to be proved ; such was the attainder of sir John 
Fenwick. Of these two last species of attainder, no lawyer has 
ever spoken with respect ; they were the cruel effect of the ran- 
cour and injustice of party spirit, nor could any thing be said in 
their excuse, except that they were made for the direct punish- 
ment of the actual criminals, and whilst they were yet living. 



LADY PAMELA FITZGERALD. 207 

The only other attainder that remained possible to be added to 
this catalogue, was that of a bill like the present, which affects 
to try after the party's death, when trial is impossible ; to punish 
guilt, when punishment was impossible; to inflict punishment 
where crime is not even pretended. 

To change the settled law of property, to confiscate the 
widow's pittance ! to plunder the orphan's cradle ! and to violate 
the religion of the dead man's grave ! For this too there was a 
precedent ; but for the honour of humanity let it be remembered, 
that a hundred and forty years had elapsed in which that prece- 
dent had not been thought worthy of imitation in Great Britain : 
he meant, he said, the attainder of the regicides ; upon the resto- 
ration, four of them were included in that bill of attainder which 
was passed after their death. 

Mr. Curran then adverted pretty much at large upon the cir- 
cumstances of that period. A king restored, and by his nature 
disposed to mercy ; a ministry of uncommon wisdom, feeling that 
the salvation of the state could be secured only by mildness and 
conciliation ; a bigoted, irritated, and interested faction in parlia- 
ment ; the public mind in the highest state of division and agita- 
tion. For what then is that act of attainder resorted to as a 
precedent ? Surely it cannot be as a precedent of that servile 
paroxysm of simulated loyalty with which the same men, who a 
few days before had shouted after the wheels of the good protec- 
tor, now raked into the grave of the traitorous usurper, and 
dragged his wretched carcass through the streets; that servile 
and simulated loyalty, which affected to bow in obsequious admi- 
ration of the salutary lenity which their vindictive folly was 
labouring to frustrate; that servile and interested hypocrisy, 
which gave a hollow and faithless support to the power of the 
monarch, utterly regardless alike of his character or his safety. 

That the example which this act of attainder held forth was 
never respected, appears from this, that it never has been follow- 
ed in Great Britain, although that country has since that time 
been agitated by one revolution, and vexed by two rebellions. 

So far from extending forfeiture or attainder beyond the ex- 
isting law, the opinion of that wise and reflecting country was 
gradually maturing into a dislike of the principle altogether: 
until at last, by the statutes of Anne and George the second, she 
declares, that no forfeiture or attainder for treason should pre- 
3C 



208 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

judice any other than the actual oflfender, nor work any injury 
to the heir or other person, after the death of a pretender to the 
throne. Why, said Mr. Curran, has Great Britain thus con- 
demned the principle of forfeiture ? — because she felt it to be un- 
just, and because she found it to be ineffectual. 

Here Mr. Curran went into many reasons to prove the im- 
policy of severe penal laws. They have ever been found, he 
said, more to exasperate than to restrain : when the infliction is 
beyond the crime, the horror of the guilt is lost in the horror of 
the punishment; the sufferer becomes an object of commiseration, 
and the injustice of the state of public odium. It was well 
observed, that in England the highwayman never murdered, be- 
cause there the offender was not condemned to torture ! but in 
France, where the offender was broken on the wheel, the tra- 
veller seldom or never escaped ! What then is it in England that 
sends the traveller home with life, but the comparative mildness 
of English law 1 what but the merciless cruelty of the French 
law, that gives the atrocious aggravation of murder to robbery ? 
The multiplication of penal laws lessens the value of life, and 
when you lessen the value of life, you lessen the fear of death. 

Look to the history of England upon this subject with re- 
spect to treason : notwithstanding all its formidable array of 
death, of Saxon forfeiture, and of feudal corruption of blood, in 
what country do you read of more treasons, or of more rebellions ? 
and why ? — because these terrors do not restrain the traitor. Be- 
jond all other delinquents, he is likely to be a person of that ar- 
dent, enthusiastic, and intrepid spirit, that is roused into more 
decisive and desperate daring, by the prospect of peril. 

Mr. Yorke thinks the child of the traitor may be reclaimed to 
his loyalty, by the restitution of his estate. Mr. Yorke, perhaps, 
might have reasoned better, if he had looked to the still greater 
likelihood of making him a deadly enemy to the state, by the 
deadly ignominy inflicted on his father, and by the loss of his own 
inheritance. 

How keenly did Hannibal pursue his vengeance which he bad 
sworn against Rome ! how much more enthusiastically would he 
have pursued his purpose, had that oath been taken upon a fa- 
ther's grave, for the avenging of a father's sufferings — for the 
avenging of what he would have called a father's wrongs ! 

If I am called upon, said he, to give more reasons, why this pre- 



LADY PAMELA FITZGERALD. 209 

cedent has not been for more than a century and a half repeated, 
I will say, that a bill of attainder is the result of an unnatural 
union of the legislative and judicial functions, in which the 
judicial has no law to restrain it ; in which the legislative has no 
rule to guide it, unless passion and prejudice, which reject 
all rule and law, can be called rules and laws ; which puts the 
lives and properties of men completely at the mercy of an arbi- 
trary and despotic power. 

Such were the acts of posthumous attainder in Ireland, in the 
reign of the arbitrary Elizabeth, who used these arts as a mere 
mode of robbing an Irish subject, for the benefit of an English 
minion. Such was the act of the ninth of William III. not passed 
for the same odious and despicable purpose, but for a purpose 
equally arbitrary and unjust, the purpose of transferring the pro- 
perty of the country from persons professing one religion, into 
the hands of those professing another ; a purpose manifested and 
avowed by the remarkable clause in that act, which saves the 
inheritance to the heir of the traitor, provided that heir be a 
protestant ! nor so brutally tyrannical in its operation, in as much 
as it gave a right to a traverse and a trial by jury, to every per- 
son claiming a right, and protected the rights of infants, mtil 
they should be of an age, and capable to assert those rights. 

There were yet, Mr. Curran said, other reasons why thatpre- 
cedent of the regicides was not followed in Great Britain A 
government that means honestly will appeal to the affectioi, not 
to the fears of the people. A state must be driven to tie last 
gasp, when it is driven to seek protection in the abandonment 
of the law, in that melancholy avowal of its weakness and its 
fear. 

Therefore it was not done in the rebellion of 1715, no' in that 
of 1745. He had hitherto, he said, abstained from adverting to 
the late transactions in Ireland ; but he could not d<fraud his 
clients or their cause, of so pregnant an example, h this coun- 
try penal laws had been tried beyond any example of any former 
times; what was the event? the race between oenalty and 
crime was continued, each growing fiercer in the conflict, until 
the penalty could go no further, and the fugitive turned upon the 
breathless pursuer. 

From what a scene of wretchedness and horro." have we es- 
caped ! But, said he, I do not wish to annoy you by the stench 
2d 



210 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

of those unbmied and u?irotted examples of the havoc and the im- 
potence of penal law, pushed to its extravagance. I am more 
pleased to turn your attention to the happy consequences of tem- 
perate conciliatory government of equal law. Compare the lat- 
ter with the former, and let your wisdom decide between the 
tempest and the calm ! 

I know it is a delicate subject, but let me presume to suggest 
what must be the impression upon this grieved and anxious 
country, if the rigour of the parliament shall seem at war with 
the mildness of the government ; if the people shall have refuge 
in the mercy of the crown from the rigour of their own repre- 
sentatives. 

But if, at the same moment, they shall see the convicted and 
the attainted secured in their lives and in their property, by the 
wise lenity of the crown, while the parliament is visiting shame, 
and misery, and want, upon the cradle of the unprotected infant, 
v/ho could not have offended 1 — But I will not follow the idea ; I 
will not see the inauspicious omen ; I pray that heaven may 
avert it. 

One topic more, said he, you will permit me to add. Every 
act of the sort ought to have a practical morality flowing from 
its {rinciple: if loyalty and justice require that these infants 
shoud be deprived of bread, must it not be a violation of that 
princple to give them food or shelter 1 Must not every loyal 
and jist man wish to see them, in the words of the famous Golden 
Bull, < always poor and necessitous, and for ever accompanied 
by the infamy of their father, languishing in continued indigence, 
and finding their punishment in living, and their relief in dying." 

If the widowed mother should carry the orphan heir of her 
unfortumte husband, to the gate of any man who might feel 
himself tmched with the sad vicissitudes of human affairs, who 
might feel a compassionate reverence for the noble blood that 
flowed in Ks veins, nobler than the royalty that first ennobled it, that, 
like a rich ;tream, rose till it ran, and hid its fountain. If, re- 
membering ':he many noble qualities of his unfortunate father, 
his heart mdted over the calamities of the child ; if his heart 
swelled, if hs eyes overflowed, if his too precipitate hand was 
stretched out by his pity, or his gratitude to the poor excommu- 
nicated sufferers, how could he justify the rebel tear^ or the traitor' 
ous humanity ? 



LADY PAMELA FITZGERALD. 211 

I shall trespass no longer upon the patience for which I am 
grateful ; — one word only, and I have done. And that is, once 
more, earnestly and solemnly to conjure you to reflect, that the 
fact — I mean the fact of guilt or innocence, which must be the 
foundation of this bill, — is not now, after the death of the party, 
capable of being tried, consistently with the liberty of a free 
people, or the unalterable rules of eternal justice. 

And as to the forfeiture and the ignominy which it enacts, that 
only can be punishment which lights upon guilt; and that can be 
only vengeance which breaks upon innocence 1 ! 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN 

IN BEHALF OF 

MR. JOHN HEVEY, (PLAINTIFF,) 

ON AN ACTION FOR AN ASSAULT, AND FALSE IMPRISONMENT 

CHARLES HENRY SIRR, Esq. (DEFENDANT.) 

Court of King's Bench, Monday, May 17th, 1803. 



Mr. Curran then stated the case for the plaintiff, in substance 
nearly to the following effect : 

He began by telling the jury, it was the most extraordinary 
action he had ever met with. It must have proceeded from the 
most unexampled impudence in the plaintiff, if he has brought it 
wantonly, or the most unparalleled miscreancy in the defendant, 
if it shall appear supported by proof And the event must stamp 
the most condign and indelible disgrace on the guilty defendant, 
unless an unworthy verdict should shift the scandal upon another 
quarter. On the record, the action, he said, appeared short and 
simple ; it was an action of trespass, vi el armis, for an assault, 
battery, and false imprisonment. But the facts that led to it, 
that explain its nature, and its enormity, and of course, that 
should measure the damages, were neither short nor simple ; the 
novelty of them might surprise, the atrocity must shock their 
feelings, if they had feelings to be shocked : — but, he said, he did 
not mean to address himself to any of their proud feelings of li- 
berty ; the season for that was past. There was, indeed, he 
said, a time, when, in addressing a jury upon very inferior viola- 
tions of human rights, he had felt his bosom glow and swell vdth 
the noble and elevating consciousness of being a free-man, speak- 
ing to free-men, and in a free country ; where, if he was not 

212 



MR. JOHN HEVEY. 213 

able to communicate the generous flame to their bosoms, lie was 
not at least so cold as not to catch it from them. But that was 
a sympathy, which he was not now so foolish as to affect, either 
to inspire or to participate. He would not insult them by the 
bitter mockery of such an affectation ; buried as they were, he 
did not wish to conjure up the shades of departed freedom to 
flutter round their tomb, to haunt or to reproach them. Where 
freedom is no more, it is a mischievous profanation to use her 
language ; because it tends to deceive the man who is no longer 
free, upon the most important of all points, that is, the nature of 
the situation to which he is reduced ; and to make him confound 
the licentiousness of words with the real possession of freedom. 
He meant not therefore, he said, to call for a haughty verdict, 
that might humble the insolence of oppression, or assert the fan- 
cied rights of independence. Far from it; he only asked for 
such a verdict, as might make some reparation for the most ex- 
treme and unmerited suffering, and might also tend to some pro- 
bable mitigation of the public and general destiny. For this pur- 
pose, he said, he must carry back their attention to the melan- 
choly period of 1798. It was at that sad crisis, that the defend- 
ant, from an obscure individual, started into notice and conse- 
quence. It is in the hot-bed of public calamity, that such por- 
tentous and inauspicious products are accelerated without being 
matured. From being a town-major, a name scarcely legible in 
the list of public incumbrances, he became at once invested with 
all the real powers of the most absolute authority. The life and 
the liberty of every man seemed to be given up to his disposal. 
With this gentleman's extraordinary elevation began the story 
of the sufferings and ruin of the plaintiff". 

It seems, a man of the name of M'Guire was prosecuted for 
some offence against the state. Mr. Hevey, the plaintiff", by ac- 
cident was in court ; he was then a citizen of wealth and credit, 
a brewer in the first line of that business. Unfortunately for 
him, he had heretofore employed the witness for the prosecution, 
and found him a man of infamous character. Unfortunately for 
himself he mentioned this circumstance in court. The counsel 
for the prisoner insisted on his being sworn ; he was so. The 
jury were convinced, that no credit was due to the witness for 
the crown, and the prisoner was accordingly acquitted. In a 
day or two after, Major Sirr met the plaintiff in the street, asked 



214 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

liow he dared to interfere in his business ? and swore by God he 
would teach him how to meddle with " his people." Gentlemen, 
said Mr. Curran, there are two sorts of prophets: one that derives 
its source from real or fancied inspiration, and who are sometimes 
mistaken. But there is another class, who prophesy what they 
are determined to bring about themselves. Of this second, and 
by far the most authentic class, was the major ; for heaven, you 
see, has no monopoly of prediction. On the following evening, 
poor Hevey was dogged in the dark into some lonely alley; 
there he was seized, he knew not by whom, nor by what au- 
thority — and became in a moment, to his family, and his friends, 
as if he had never been. He was carried away in equal igno- 
rance of his crime, and of his destiny ; whether to be tortured, or 
hanged, or transported. His crime he soon learned ; it was the 
treason which he had committed against the majesty of major 
Sirr. He was immediately conducted to a new place of impri- 
sonment in the castle-yard, called the provost. Of this mansion 
of misery, of which you have since heard so much, major Sandys 
was, and I believe yet is, the keeper : a gentleman of whom I 
know how dangerous it is to speak ; and of whom every prudent 
man will think and talk with all due reverence. He seemed a 
twin-star of the defendant — equal in honour, in confidence; 
equal also (for who could be superior?) in probity and humanity. 
To this gentleman was my client consigned, and in his custody 
he remained about seven weeks, unthought of by the world, as 
if he had never existed. The oblivion of the buried is as pro- 
found as the oblivion of the dead ; his family may have mourned 
his absence or his probable death ; but why should I mention so 
paltry a circumstance 1 The fears, or the sorrows of the wretch- 
ed give no interruption to the general progress of things. The 
sun rose and the sun set, just as it did before — the business of the 
government, the business of the castle, of the feast, or the tor- 
ture, went on with their usual exactness and tranquillity. At 
last Mr. Hevey was discovered among the sweepings of the pri- 
son ; and was at last to be disposed of. He was at last honoured 
with the personal notice of major Sandys. — " Hevey, (says the 
major,) 1 have seen you ride, I think, a smart sort of a mare ; you 
can't use her here ; you had better give me an order for her." 
The plaintiff, you may well suppose, by this time had a tolerable 
idea of his situation ; he thought he might have much to fear 



MR. JOHN HEVEY. 215 

from a refusal, and something to hope from compliance ; at all 
events, he saw it would be a means of apprizing his family that 
he was not dead : — he instantly gave the order required. The 
major graciously accepted it, saying, your courtesy will not cost 
you much; you are to be sent down to-morrow to Kilkenny to be 
tried for your life ; you will most certainly be hanged ; and you 
can scarcely think that your journey to the other world will be 
performed on horseback. The humane and honourable major 
was equally a prophet with his compeer. The plaintiff on the 
next day took leave of his prison, as he supposed, for the last 
time, and was sent under a guard to Kilkenny, then the head 
quarters of sir Charles Asgil, there to be tried by a court-martial 
for such crime as might chance to be alleged against him. In 
any other country, the scene that took place on that occasion 
might excite no little horror and astonishment ; but with us, these 
sensations are become extinguished by frequency of repetition. 
I am instructed, that a proclamation was sent forth, offering a 
reward to cmy man, who would come forward, and give any 
evidence against the traitor Hevey. An unhappy wretch, who 
had been shortly before condemned to die, and was then lying 
ready for execution, was allured by the proposal. His integrity 
was not firm enough to hesitate long, between the alternative 
proposed; pardon, favour, and reward, witli perjury, on one 
side ; the rope and the gibbet on the other. His loyalty decided 
the question against his soul. He was examined, and Hevey 
was appointed by the sentence of a mild, and, no doubt, enlight- 
ened court-martial, to take the place of the witness, and succeed- 
ed to the vacant halter. Hevey, you may suppose (continued 
Mr. Curran,) now thought his labours at an end ; but he was 
mistaken : his hour was not yet come. You are probably, gen- 
tlemen, or you, my lords, are accounting for his escape, by the 
fortunate recollection of some early circumstances that might 
have smote upon the sensibility of sir Charles Asgil, and made 
him believe, that he was in debt to providence for the life of one 
innocent though convicted victim. But it was not so ; his escape 
was purely accidental. The proceedings upon this trial happen- 
ed to meet the eye of lord Cornwallis. The freaks of fortune 
are not always cruel ; in the bitterness of her jocularity, you see 
she can adorn the miscreancy of the slave, in the ti-appings of 
power, and rank, and wealth. But her playfulness is not always 
3D 



216 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

inhuman ; she will sometimes, in her gambols, fling oil upon the 
wounds of the sufferer ; she will sometimes save the captive from 
the dungeon and the grave, were it only, that she might af- 
terwards reconsign him to his destiny, by the reprisal of capri- 
cious cruelty upon fantastic commiseration. Lord Cornwallis 
read the transmiss of Hevey's condemnation ; his heart recoiled 
from the detail of stupidity and barbarity. He dashed his pen 
across the odious record, and ordered that Hevey should be forth- 
with liberated. I cannot but highly honour him for his conduct 
in this instance ; nor, when I recollect his peculiar situation at 
that disastrous period, can I much blame him for not having 
acted towards that court with the same vigour and indignation, 
which he hath since shown with respect to those abominable 
jurisdictions. Hevey was now a man again — he shook the dust 
off his feet against his prison gate : his heart beat the response to 
the anticipated embrace of his family and his friends, and he re- 
turned to Dublin. On his arrival here, one of the first persons he 
met with was his old friend, major Sandys. In the eye of poor 
Hevey, justice and humanity had shorn the major of his beams — 
he no longer regarded him with respect or terror. He demanded 
his mare; observing, that though he might have travelled to 
heaven on foot, he thought it more comfortable to perform his 
earthly journeys on horseback. Ungrateful villain, says the 
major ; is this the gratitude you show to his majesty and to me, 
for our clemency to you ? You shan't get possession of the beast, 
which you have forfeited by your treason ; nor can I suppose, 
that a noble animal, that had been honoured with conveying the 
weight of duty and allegiance, could condescend to load her loyal 
loins with the vile burden of a convicted traitor. As to the 
major (said Mr. Curran) I am not surprised that he spoke and 
acted as he did. He was no doubt astonished at the impudence 
and novelty of calling the privileges of official plunder into ques- 
tion. Hardened by the numberless instances of that mode of un- 
punished acquisition, he had erected the frequency of impunity 
into a sort of w^arrant of spoil and rapine. One of these instances, 
I feel, I am now bringing to the memory of your lordship. A 
learned and respected brother barrister had a silver cup ; the 
major heard that for many years it had borne an inscription of 
" Erin go brack," which meant " Ireland for ever." The major 
considered this perseverance in guilt for such a length of years 



MR. JOHN HEVEY. 217 

as a forfeiture of the delinquent vessel. My poor friend was ac- 
cordingly robbed of his cup. But, upon writing to the then at- 
torney general, that excellent officer felt the outrage, as it was 
his nature to feel every thing that was barbarous or base ; and 
the major's loyal side-board was condemned to the grief of resti- 
tution. And here, (said Mr. Curran,) let me say in my own de- 
fence, that this is the only occasion, upon which I have ever 
mentioned this circumstance with the least appearance of light- 
ness. 1 have often told the story in a way that it would not be- 
come me to tell it here. I have told it in the spirit of those feel- 
ings, which were excited at seeing, that one man could be sober 
and humane, at a crisis when so many thousands were drunk 
and barbarous. And probably my statement was not stinted by 
the recollection, that I held that person in peculiar respect and 
regard. But little does it signify, whether acts of moderation 
and humanity are blazoned by gratitude, by flattery, or by 
friendship; they are recorded in the heart from which they 
sprung ; and, in the hour of adverse vicissitude, if it should ever 
come, sweet is the odour of their memory, and precious is the 
balm of their consolation. But to return: Hevey brought an 
action for his mare. The major not choosing to come into court, 
and thereby suggest the probable success of a thousand actions, 
restored the property, and paid the costs of the suit to the attor- 
ney of Mr. Hevey. It may perhaps strike you, my lord, said Mr. 
Curran, as if I was stating what was not relevant to the action. 
It is materially pertinent ; I am stating a system of concerted 
vengeance and oppression. These two men acted in concert ; 
they were Archer and Aimwell. You master at Litchfield, and 
I at Coventry. You plunderer in the gaol, and I tyrant in the 
street. And in our respective situations we will co-operate in 
the common cause of robbery and vengeance. And I state this, 
(said Mr. Curran) because I see major Sandys in court : and be- 
cause I feel I can prove the fact, beyond the possibility of denial. 
If he does not dare to appear, so called upon, as I have called upon 
him, I prove it by his not daring to appear. If he does venture 
to come forward, I will prove it by his own oath ; or if he ven- 
tures to deny a syllable that I have stated, I will prove by 
irrefragible evidence, that his denial was false and perjured. 
Thus far, gentlemen, (said Mr. Curran,) we have traced the 
plaintiff through the strange vicissitudes of barbarous imprison- 
2e 



218 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

ment, of atrocious condemnation, and of accidental deliverance. 
(Here Mr. Curran described the feelings of himself and of his 
family upon his restoration ; his difhculties on his return ; his 
struggle against the aspersions on his character; his renewed 
industry ; his gradual success ; the implacable malignity of Sirr 
and of Sandys ; and of the immediate cause of the present action.) 
Three years, said Mr. Curran, had elapsed since the deliverance 
of my client ; the public atmosphere had cleared — the private 
destiny of Hevey seemed to have brightened, but the malice of 
his enemies had not been appeased. On the 8th of September 
last, Mr. Hevey was sitting in a public coffee-house : major Sirr 
was there. Mr. Hevey was informed that the major had at that 
moment said, that he (Hevey) ought to have been hanged. The 
plaintiff" was fired at the charge ; he fixed his eye on Sirr, and 
asked, if he had dared to say so ? Sirr declared that he had, 
and had said truly. Hevey answered, that he was a slanderous 
scoundrel. At the instant Sirr rushed upon him, and assisted by 
three or four of his satellites, who had attended him in disguise, 
secured him and sent him to the castle guard, desiring that a re- 
ceipt might be given for the villain. He was sent thither. The 
officer of the guard chanced to be an Englishman, but lately ar- 
rived in Ireland ; he said to the baiUffs, if this was in England, I 
should think this gentleman entitled to bail, but I don't know the 
laws of this country. However, I think you had better loosen 
those irons on his wrists, or I think they may kill him. 

Major Sirr, the defendant, soon arrived, went into his office, 
and returned with an order which he had written, and by virtue 
of which Mr. Hevey was conveyed to the custody of his old friend 
and goaler, major Sandys. Here he was flung into a room of 
about thirteen feet by twelve — it was called the hospital of the 
provost. — It was occupied by six beds, in which were to lie four- 
teen or fifteen miserable wretches, some of them sinking under 
contagious diseases. On his first entrance, the light that was 
admitted by the opening of the door, disclosed to him a view of 
the sad fellow-sufferers, for whose loathsome society he was 
once more to exchange the cheerful haunts of men, the use of 
open air, and of his own limbs ; and where he was condemned to 
expiate the disloyal hatred and contempt, which he had dared 
to show to the overweening and felonious arrogance of slaves in 
office, and minions in authority ; here he passed the first night, 



MR. JOHN HEVEY. 219 

without bed or food. The next morning his humane keeper, the 
major, appeared. The plaintiff demanded, " why he was so im- 
prisoned," complained of hunger, and asked for the gaol allow- 
ance. Major Sandys replied with a torrent of abuse, which he 
concluded by saying, — " Your crime is your insolence to major 
Sirr ; however, he disdains to trample on you — you may appease 
him by proper and contrite submission ; but unless you do so, 
you shall rot where you are. — I tell you this, that if government 
will not protect us, by God, we will not protect them. You will 
probably, (for I know your insolent and ungrateful hardiness,) at- 
tempt to get out by an habeas corpus ; but in that you will find 
yourself mistaken, as such a rascal deserves." Hevey was inso- 
lent enough to issue a habeas corpus, and a return was made 
upon it — " that Hevey was in custody under a warrant from 
general Craig, on a charge of treason." That this return was a 
gross falsehood, fabricated by Sirr, I am instructed to assert— 
Let him prove the truth of it if he can. The judge, before whom 
this return was brought, felt that he had noauthoiity to liberate 
the unhappy prisoner ; and thus, by a most inhuman and mali- 
cious lie, my client was again remanded to the horrid mansion of 
pestilence and famine. Mr. Curran proceeded to describe the 
feelings of Mr. Hevey — the despair of his friends — the ruin of his 
affairs — the insolence of Sandys — his offer to set him at large, on 
condition of making an abject submission to Sirr — the indignant 
rejection of Hevey — the supplication of his father and sister, 
rather to submit to any enemy, however base and odious, than 
perish in such a situation ; — the repugnance of Hevey — the re- 
petition of kind remonstrances, and the final submission of He- 
vey to their entreaties ; — his signing a submission, dictated by 
Sandys, and his enlargement from confinement. Thus, said Mr. 
Curran, was he kicked from his gaol into the common mass of 
his fellow slaves, by yielding to the tender entreaties of the kin- 
dred that loved him, to sign, what was, in fact, a release of his 
claim to the common rights of a human creature, by humbling 
himself to the brutal arrogance of a pampered slave. But he 
did suffer the dignity of his nature to be subdued by its kindness ; 
— he has been enlarged, and he has brought the present action. 
As to the facts that he had stated, Mr. Curran said, he would 
make a few observations : — it might be said for the defendant, 
that much of what was stated may not appear in proof To 



220 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

that, he said, he would not have so stated, if he had not seen 
major Sandys in court ; he had therefore put the facts against 
him in a way, which he thought the most hkely to rouse him to 
a defence of his own character, if he dared to be examined as a 
witness. He had, he trusted, made him feel, that he had no way 
of escaping universal detestation, but by denying those charges, 
if they are false ; and if they were not denied, being thus pub- 
licly asserted, his entire case was admitted — his original oppres- 
sion in the provost was admitted — his robbery of the cup was ad- 
mitted — his robbery of the mare was admitted — the lie so auda- 
ciously forged on the habeas corpus was admitted — the extortion 
of the infamous apology was admitted. — Again, said Mr. Curran, 
I challenge this worthy compeer of a worthy compeer to make 
his election, between proving his guilt by his own corporal oath, 
or by the more credible modesty of his silence. And now, said 
Mr. Curran, I have given you a mere sketch of this extraordinary 
history. No country governed by any settled laws, or treated 
with common humanity, could furnish any occurrences of such 
unparalleled atrocity ; and if the author of Caleb Williams, or 
of the Simple Story, were to read the tale of this man's sufferings, 
it might, I think, humble the vanity of their talents, (if they are 
not too proud to be vain,) when they saw how much a more 
fruitful source of incident could be found in the infernal workings 
of the heart of a malignant slave, than in the richest copiousness 
of the most fertile and creative imagination. But it is the des- 
tiny of Ireland to be the scene of such horrors, and to be stung by 
such reptiles to madness and to death. And now, said Mr. Cur- 
ran, I feel a sort of melancholy pleasure, in getting rid of this 
odious and nauseous subject. It remains to me only to make a 
few observations as to the damages you ought to give, if you be- 
Heve the case of the plaintiff to be as I have stated. I told you 
before, that neither pride nor spirit belong to our situation ; I 
should be sorry to influence you into any apish affectation of the 
port or stature of freedom or independence. But my advice to 
you is, to give the full amount of the damages laid in the de- 
claration ; and I'll tell you why I give you that advice : I think no 
damages could be excessive, either as a compensation for the in- 
jury of the plaintiff, or as a punishment of the savage barbarity 
of the defendant ; but my reasons for giving you this advice lie 
much deeper than such considerations; they spring from a 



MR. JOHN HEVEY. 221 

view of our present most forlorn and disastrous situation. You. 
are now in the hands of another country ; that country has no 
means of knowing your real condition, except hy information 
that she may accidentally derive from transactions of a public 
nature. No printer would dare to publish the thousand instances 
of atrocity, which we have witnessed as hideous as the present, 
nor any of them, unless he did it in some sort of confidence, that 
he could scarcely be made a public sacrifice by brutal force, for 
publishing what was openly proved in a court of justice. Mr. 
Curran here made some pointed observations on the state of a 
country, where the freedom of the press is extinguished, and 
where another nation, by whose indolent mercy, or whose in- 
stigated fury, we may be spared, or sacrificed, can know nothing 
of the extent of our sufferings, or our delinquency, but by casual 
hearsay. I know, said he, that those philosophers have been 
abused, who think that men are born in a state of war. I con- 
fess I go further, and firmly think they cannot be reclaimed to a 
state of peace. When I see the conduct of man to man, I be- 
lieve it. When I see the list of offences in every criminal code 
of Europe — when I compare the enormity of their crimes with 
the still greater enormity of their punishments, I retain no doubt 
upon the subject. But if I could hesitate as to men in the same 
community, I have no doubt of the inextinguishable malignity that 
will for ever inflame nation against nation. Well was it said, 
that a " nation has no heart ;" towards each other they are uni- 
formly envious, vindif.tive, oppressive, and unjust. What did 
Spain feel for the murders or the robberies of the west ? — no- 
thing. And yet, at that time, she prided herself as much as Eng- 
land ever did on the elevation of her sentiment, and the refine- 
ment of her morality. Yet what an odious spectacle did she ex- 
hibit ? — her bosom burning with all the fire of rapine and tyranny ; 
her mouth full of the pious praises of the living God, and her 
hands red with the blood of his innocent and devoted creatures. 
When I advise you, therefore, to mark your feelings of the case 
before you, don't think I mean, that you could make any general 
impression on the morality, or tenderness of the country, whose 
property we are become. I am not so foolish as to hope any 
such effect : practical justice and humanity are virtues that re- 
quire laborious acts, and mortifying privations ; expect not there- 
fore to find them ; appeal not to them. But there are principles 



222 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

and feelings substituted in their place, a stupid preference and 
admiration of self, an affectation of humanity, and a fondness for 
unmerited praise ; these you may find, for they cost nothing ; and 
upon them you may produce some effect. When outrages of 
this kind are held up to the world, as done under the sanction 
of their authority, they must become odious to mankind, unless 
they let fall some reprobation on the immediate instruments and 
abettors of such deeds. An Irish lord lieutenant will shrink from 
the imputation of countenancing them. Great Britain will see, 
that it cannot be her interest to encourage such an infernal spirit 
of subaltern barbarity, that reduces man to a condition lower 
than that of the beast of the field. They will be ashamed of 
employing such instruments as the present defendant. When the 
government of Ireland lately gave up the celebrated O'Brien to 
the hands of the executioner, I have no little reason to believe that 
they suffered as they deserved on the occasion. I have no doubt, 
but that your verdict of this day, if you act as you ought to do, will 
produce a similar effect. And as to England, I cannot too often in- 
culcate upon you, that she knows nothing of our situation. When 
torture was the daily and ordinary system of the executive gov- 
ernment, it was denied in London, with a profligacy of effrontery, 
equal to the barbarity with which it was exhibited in Dublin ; 
and, if the facts that shall appear to-day should be stated at the 
other side of the water, I make no doubt, but very near one hun- 
dred worthy persons would be ready to deny their existence upon 
their honour, or, if necessary, upon their oaths. 

I cannot also but observe to you, continued Mr. Curran, that 
the real state of one country is more forcibly impressed on the 
attention of another, by a verdict on such a subject as this, than 
it could be by any general description. When you endeavour 
to convey an idea of a great number of barbarians, practising a 
great variety of cruelties upon an incalculable multitude of suf- 
ferers, nothing defined or specific finds its way to the heart, nor 
is any sentiment excited, save that of a general erratic unap- 
propriated commiseration. If, for instance, you wished to con- 
vey to the mind of an English matron the horrors of that direful 
period, when, in defiance of the remonstrance of the ever to be la- 
niented Abercromby, our poor people were surrendered to the 
licentious brutality of the soldiery, by the authority of the state, 
you would vainly endeavour to give her a general picture of 



MR. JOHN HEVEY. 223 

lust, and rapine, and murder, and conflagration. By endeavour- 
ing to comprehend every thing, you would convey nothing. 
When the father of poetry wishes to portray the movements of 
contending armies, and an embattled field, he exemplifies only; 
he does not describe ; he does not venture to describe the per- 
plexed and promiscuous conflicts of adverse hosts ; but by the acts 
and fates of a few individuals he conveys a notion of the vicissi- 
tudes of the fight, and the fortunes of the day. So should your 
story to her keep clear of generalities ; instead of exhibiting the 
picture of an entire province, select a single object ; and even 
in that single object do not release the imagination of your hearer 
from its task, by giving more than an outline ; take a cottage ; 
place the affrighted mother of her orphan daughters at the door, 
the paleness of death upon her face, and more than its agonies in 
her heart ; her aching heart, her anxious ear, struggling through 
the mist of closing day, to catch the approaches of desolation and 
dishonour. The ruffian gang arrives, the feast of plunder begins, 
the cup of madness kindles in its circulation. The wandering 
glances of the ravisher become concentrated upon the shrinking 
and devoted victim. — You need not dilate, you need not expati- 
ate ; the unpolluted mother, to whom you tell the story of hor- 
ror, beseeches you not to proceed ; she presses her child to her 
heart, she drowns it in her tears, her fancy catches more than an 
angel's tongue could describe ; at a single view she takes in the 
whole miserable succession of force, of profanation, of despair, 
of death. — So it is in the question before us. If any man shall 
hear of this day's transaction, he cannot be so foolish as to sup- 
pose that we have been confined to a single character like those 
now brought before you. No, gentlemen ; far from it ; he wdll 
have too much common sense, not to know, that outrages like 
this are never solitary ; that where the public calamity gener- 
ates imps hke those, their number is as the sands of the sea, and 
their fury as insatiable as its waves. I am therefore anxious, 
that our masters should have one authenticated example of the 
treatment which our unhappy country suffers under the sanction 
of their authority ; it will put a strong question to their humanity, 
if they have any — to their prudence, if their pride will let them 
listen to it ; or, at least, to that anxiety for reputation, to that 
pretention to the imaginary virtues of mildness and mercy, to 
which even those countries the most divested of them are so 
3E 



224 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

ready to assert their claim, and so credulously disposed to believe 
that claim allowed. 

There are some considerations respecting yourselves, and the 
defendant, to which I should wish to say a word. You may 
perhaps think your persons unsafe, if you find a verdict against 
so considerable a person. I know his power, as well as you do — 
I know he might send you to the provost, as he has done the 
plaintiff, and forge a return on any writ you might issue for your 
deliverance — I know there is no spot in this devoted nation, (ex- 
cept that on which we now are,) where the story of oppression 
can be told or heard; but I think you can have no well founded 
apprehensions. There is a time, when cruelty and oppression 
become satiated and fatigued; in that satiety at leastyou will find 
yourselves secure. But there is still a better security for you : 
the gratitude of the worthy defendant — if any thing could add 
to his honours, and his credit, and his claims, it would be your 
verdict for the plaintiff; for in what instance have you ever 
seen any man so effectually accredited and recommended, as by 
the public execration ? What a man, for instance, might not 
O'Brien have been, if the envy of the gibbet had not arrested 
the career of his honours and preferments ? In every point of 
view, therefore, I recommend to you to find, and to find liberally 
for the plaintiff. I have founded my advice upon the real cir- 
cumstances of your situation ; 1 have not endeavoured to stimu- 
late you into any silly hectic of fancied liberty. I do not call 
upon you to expose yourselves by the affectation of vindicating 
the cause of freedom and humanity ; much less do I wish to ex- 
hibit ourselves to those w^hose property we are, as indignant or 
contumacious under their authority. Far from it, they are un- 
questionably the proprietors of us ; they are entitled of right to 
drive us, and to work us ; but we may be permitted modestly 
to suggest, that for their own sakes, and for their own interest, 
a line of moderation may be drawn. That there are excesses 
of infliction that human nature cannot bear. With respect to 
her western negroes. Great Britain has had the wisdom, and hu- 
manity to feel the justice of this observation, and in some degree 
to act upon it ; and I have too high an opinion of that great and 
philosophical nation, not to hope, that she might think us not 
undeserving of equal mildness ; provided it did not interfere with 
her just authority over us. It would, I should even think, be for 



MR. JOHN HEVEY. 225 

her credit, that having the honour of so illustrious a rider, we 
should be kept in some sort of condition, somewhat bordering 
upon spirit, which cannot be maintained, if she suffers us to be 
utterly broken down, by the malicious wantonness of her grooms 
and jockeys. Mr. Curran concluded by saying, that the cause 
was of no inconsiderable expectation ; and that in whatever 
light the jury regarded it, whether with respect to the two coun- 
tries, or Ireland singly, or to the parties concerned, or to their 
own sense of character and public duty, or to the natural conse- 
quences that must flow from the event, they ought to consider it 
with the most profound attention, before they agreed upon their 
verdict. 

Verdict for the Plaintiff, IoOl. damages and costs. 

2/ 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

IN 

DEFENCE OF OWEN KIRWAN, 

FOR HIGH TREASON; 
At the Session House, Green street, on Saturday, October 1, 1803. 



Mr. Curran rose and said, that it had become his duty to state 
to the court and jury the defence of the prisoner. He said he 
had been chosen for that very unpleasant task, without his con- 
currence or knowledge ; but as soon as he was apprised of it, he 
accepted it without hesitation. To assist a human being la- 
bouring under the most awful of all situations, trembling in the 
dreadfiil alternative of honourable life, or ignominious death, 
was what no man, worthy of the name, could refuse to man : but 
it would be peculiarly base in any person who had the honour of 
wearing the king's gown, to leave the king's subject undefended, 
until a sentence pronounced upon him had shown, that neither 
in fact, nor in law, could any defence avail him. He could not, 
however, but confess, that he felt no small consolation when he 
compared his present with his former situation upon similar oc- 
casions. — In those sad times to which he alluded, it was frequent- 
ly his fate to come forward to the spot where he then stood, with 
a body sinking under infirmity and disease, and a mind broken 
with the consciousness of public calamity, created and exasper- 
ated by public folly. It had pleased heaven that he should live 
to survive both those afflictions, and he was grateful to its mercy. 
I now, said he, come here through a composed and quiet city— J 
read no expression in any face, save such as marks the ordinary 
feelings of social life, or the various characters of civil occupation 
— I see no frightful spectacle of infuriated power, or suffering 
humanity — 1 see no tortures — I hear no shrieks — I no longer see 

226 



SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF OWEN KIRWAN. 227 

the human heart charred in the flame of its own vile and paltry 
passions — black and bloodless — capable only of catching and 
communicating that destructive fire by which it devours, and is 
itself devoured. — I no longer behold the ravages of that odious 
bigotry by which we were deformed, and degraded, and disgraced 
— a bigotry against which no honest man should ever miss an op- 
portunity of putting his countrymen, of all sects and of all de- 
scriptions, upon their guard : it is the accursed and promiscuous 
progeny of servile hypocrisy, of remorseless lust of power — of in- 
satiate thirst of gain — labouring for the destruction of man, under 
the specious pretences of religion — her banner stolen from the 
altar of God, and her allies congregated from the abysses of hell, 
she acts by votaries to be restrained by no compunctions of hu- 
manity, for they are dead to mercy ; to be reclaimed by no 
voice of reason, for refutation is the bread on which their folly 
feeds: they are outlawed alike from their species and their 
Creator ; the object of their crime is social life, and the wages 
of their sin is social death ; for though it may happen that a guilty 
individual should escape from the law that he has broken, it can- 
not be so with nations : their guilt is too extensive and unwieldy 
for such escape : they may rest assured that Providence has, in 
the natural connexion between causes and their effects, establish- 
ed a system of retributive justice, by which the crimes of nations 
are sooner or later avenged by their own inevitable consequences. 
But that hateful bigotry — that baneful discord, which fired the 
heart of man, and steeled it against his brother, has fled at last, 
and I trust for ever. Even in this melancholy place I feel myself 
restored and recreated by breathing the mild atmosphere of jus- 
tice, mercy, and humanity — T feel 1 am addressing the parental 
authority of the law — I feel I am addressing a jury of my coun- 
trymen, my fellow subjects, and my fellow christians — against 
whom my heart is waging no concealed hostility — from whom 
my face is disguising no latent sentiment of repugnance or disgust. 
1 have not now to touch the high raised strings of an angry 
passion in those that hear me~nor have I the terror of thinking, 
that if those strings cannot be snapt by the stroke, they will be 
only provoked into a more instigated vibration. 

Mr. Curran then proceeded to observe, that this happy change 
in the minds and feelings of all men was the natural consequen- 
ces of that system of mildness and good temper which had been 



228 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

recently adopted, and which he strongly exhorted the jury to 
imitate, and to improve upon — that they might thereby demon- 
strate to ourselves, to Great Britain, and to the enemy, that we 
were not that assemblage of fiends which we had been alleged 
to be — unworthy of the ordinary privilege of regular justice, or 
the lenient treatment of a merciful government. — He said, it was 
of the utmost importance to be on their guard against the wicked 
and mischievous representation of the circumstances which called 
them then together — they ought not to take from any unauthen- 
ticated report those facts which they could have directly from 
sworn evidence. He had heard much of the dreadful extent of 
the conspiracy against this country — of the narrow escape of the 
government. They now saw the fact as it was. By the judicious 
adoption of a mild and conciliatory system of conduct, what was 
six years ago a formidable rebellion, had now dwindled down to 
a drunken, riotous insurrection — disgraced, certainly, by some 
odious atrocities — its objects, whatever they were, no doubt, 
highly criminal ; but, as an attack upon the state, of the most 
contemptible insignificance. — He did not wonder that the patrons 
of burning and torture should be vexed that their favourite in- 
struments were not employed in recruiting for the rebellion. He 
had no doubt but that had they been so employed, the effect 
would have followed, and that an odious, drunken insurrection, 
would have been easily swelled into a formidable rebellion — nor 
was it strange that persons so mortified should vent themselves 
in wanton exaggerated misrepresentations, and in unmerited 
censure — in slandering the nation in the person of the viceroy — 
and the viceroy in the character of the nation — and that they 
should do so, without considering that they were weakening the 
common resources against common danger, by making the differ- 
ent parts of the empire odious to each other ; and by holding out 
to the enemy, and falsely holding out, that we were too much 
absorbed in civil discord to be capable of effectual resistance. In 
making this observation, he said his wish was merely to refute a 
slander upon his country. He had no pretensions to be the vin- 
dicator of the lord lieutenant of Ireland, whose person he did not 
know that he had ever seen : at the same time he said, that 
when he was so necessarily forced upon the subject, he felt no 
disposition to conceal the respect and satisfaction with which he 
saw the king's representative comport liimsclf as he did, at a 



OWEN KIRWAN. 229 

crisis of no little anxiety, though of no considerable danger, if we 
may believe the evidence we have heard. He thought it was a 
proof of his excellency's firmness and good sense, not to discredit 
his own opinion of his confidence in the public safety, by an os- 
tentatious display of unnecessary open preparation ; and he 
thought he did himself equal honour by preserving his usual 
temper, and not sulFering himself to be exasperated by the event, 
when it did happen, into the adoption of any violent or precipi- 
tate measures. Perhaps he [Mr. Curran] might even be excused 
if he confessed that he was not wholly free from some professional 
vanity, when he saw, that the descendant of a great lawyer v^^as 
capable of remembering, what, without the memory of such an 
example, he perhaps might not have done, that even in the mo- 
ment of peril the law is the best safeguard of the constitution. 
At all events, he felt, that a man, who at all times had so freely 
censured the extravagances of power and force as he had done, 
was justified, if not bound, by the consistency of character, to 
give the fair attestation of his opinion to the exercise of wisdom 
and humanity xcherever he found them ; whether in a friend or in 
a stranger. He hoped, he said, that these preliminary obser- 
vations were not wantonly and irrelevantly delaying them from 
the question which they were to try, and which he was ready to 
enter into ; but there still remained a circumstance to be observ- 
ed upon for a moment, before they entered upon the real subject 
of their inquiry, the guilt or innocence of the prisoner ; the fact 
that had been so impressively stated : the never to be too much 
lamented fate of that excellent man lord Kilwarden — (and here 
Mr. Curran drew a character of him, as marked by the most 
scrupulous anxiety for justice, and by the mildest and tenderest 
feeUngs of humanity.) — But, said he, let us not wantonly slander 
the character of the nation by giving any countenance to the 
notion, that the horror of such a crime could be extended farther 
than the actual perpetration of the deed. The general indigna- 
tion, the tears that were shed at the sad news of his fate, show 
that we are not that nest of demons on whom any general stigma 
could attach from such an event ; the wicked wretch himself, 
perhaps, has cut ofif the very man, through whose humanity he 
might have escaped the consequences of other crimes ; and by an 
hideous aggravation of his guilt, has given another motive to 
Providence to trace the mifrderer's steps, and secure the certain- 



230 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OP 

ty of his punishment ; but on this occasion the jury should put it 
out of their minds, and think nothing of that valuable man, save 
his last advice, " that no person should perish but by the just 
sentence of the law ;" and that advice he hoped they would 
honour, not by idle praise, but by strict observance. 

Mr. Curran now proceeded to state the charge in the indict- 
ment, and the evidence adduced ; and contended that the testi- 
mony showed no fact of conspiracy — no adopted object of treason 
— no actual attack — no number of persons engaged that could 
possibly be adequate to the accomplishment of such an object. 
He strongly reprobated the idea of acting upon what was called 
notoriety of rebellion — notoriety was at best but another name 
for reputation, which could not, even by law, be given in evi- 
dence in any criminal case, and which a fortiori could not sustain 
a verdict of conviction ; but, he said, if the actual evidence of 
the guilt was thus weak, it was not unfair to consider the proba- 
bility of such a conspiracy at the present time. It was clear 
from the evidence, that it could not be imputed to any particular 
sect, or party, or faction, because no sect or faction could fail, 
had they acted in it, of engaging one hundred times the number 
of deluded instruments in their design. We may then fairly ask, 
is it likely that the country at large, setting even apart all moral 
tie of duty, or allegiance, or the difficulty, or the danger, could 
see any motive of interest to recommend to them the measure of 
separating from England, or fraternizing with France? Whether 
there was any description of men in Ireland who could expect 
any advantage from such a change? And this reasoning, he 
said, was more pertinent to the question, because politics were 
not now, as heretofore, a dead science, in a dead language ; they 
had now become the subject of the day, vernacular and univer- 
sal, and the repose which the late system of Irish government 
had given the people for reflection, had enabled them to con- 
sider their own condition, and what they, or any other country, 
could have to hope from France, or rather from its present mas- 
ter. He said he scorned to allude to that personage merely to 
scold or to revile him ; unmeaning obloquy may show that we do 
not love the object, but certainly that we do not fear him. — 
He then adverted to the present condition of Bonaparte; a 
stranger — an usurper — getting possession of a numerous, proud, 
volatile, and capricious people ; getting that possession by military 



OWEN KIRWAN. 231 

force — able to hold It only by force: to secure his power he 
found, or thought he found it necessary to abolish all rehgious 
establishments, as well as all shadow of freedom. He had com- 
pletely subjugated all the adjoining nations. Now, said Mr. Cur- 
ran, it is clear that there are but two modes of holding states or 
the members of the same state together, namely, community of in- 
terest or predominance of force — the former is the natural bond of 
the British empire ; their interest, their hopes, their dangers can 
be no other than one and the same, if they are not stupidly blind 
to their own situation ; and stupidly blind indeed must they be, 
and justly must they incur the inevitable consequences of that 
blindness and stupidity, if they have not fortitude and magna- 
nimity enough to lay aside those mean and narrow jealousies, 
which have hitherto prevented that community of interest and 
unity of effort, by which alone we can stand, and without which 
we must fall together. But force only can hold the requisitions 
of the French consul ; — what community of interest can we have 
with the different nations that he has subdued and plundered? — 
clearly none. Can he venture to establish any regular and pro- 
tected system of religion amongst them ? Wherever he erected 
an altar, he would set up a monument of condemnation and re- 
proach upon those wild and fantastic speculations which he is 
pleased to dignify with the name of Philosophy, but which other 
men, perhaps, because they are endowed with a less aspiring in- 
tellect, conceive to be a desperate anarchical atheism, giving to 
every man a dispensing power for the gratification of his passion, 
teaching him that he may be a rebel to his conscience with ad- 
vantage, and to his God with impunity. Just as soon would the 
government of Britain venture to display the Crescent in their 
churches, as an honorarj'- member of all faiths to show any re- 
verence to the Cross in his dominions. Apply the same reasoning 
to liberty: — can he venture to give any reasonable portion of it 
to his subjects at home, or his vassals abroad ? The answer is 
obvious: sustained merely by military force, his unavoidable 
policy is to make the army every thing, and the people nothing. If 
he ventured to elevate his soldiers into citizens, and his wretched 
subjects into freemen, he would form a confederacy of mutual 
interest between both, against which he could not exist a mo- 
ment. If he relaxed in like manner with Holland, or Belgium, 
or Switzerland, or Italy, and withdrew his armies from them, he 
3F 



232 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

would excite and make them capalile of instant revolt. There 
is one circumstance which just leaves it possible for him not to 
chain them down still more rigorously than he has done, and that 
is, the facility with which he can pour military reinforcements 
upon them in case of necessity. But destitute as he is of a ma- 
rine, he could look to no such resource with respect to any insular 
acquisition, and of course he should guard against the possibility 
of danger by so complete and merciless a thraldom as would 
make any efTort of resistance physically impossible. — Perhaps, 
my lords and gentlemen, continued Mr. Curran, I may be thought 
the apologist, instead of the reviler of the ruler of France. I af- 
fect not either character. — I am searching for the motives of his 
conduct, and not for the topics of his justification. I do not af- 
fect to trace those motives to any depravity of heart or of mind 
which accident may have occasioned for the season, and v^^hich 
reflection or compunction may extinguish or allay, and thereby 
make him a completely different man with respect to France 
and to the world ; 1 am acting more fairly and more usefully by 
my country, when I show, that his conduct must be so swayed 
by the permanent pressure of his situation, by the control of an 
unchangeable and inexorable necessity, that he cannot dare to 
relax or relent without becoming the certain victim of his own 
humanity or contrition. 1 may be asked are these merely my 
own speculations, or have others in Ireland adopted them; I 
answer freely, non mens hie sermo est. It is, to my own knowledge, 
the result of serious reflection in numbers of our countrymen. In 
the storm of arbitrary sway, in the distraction of torture and suf- 
fering, the human mind had lost its poise and its tone, and was 
incapable of sober reflection ; but, by removing those terrors from 
it, by holding an even hand between all parties, by disdaining 
the patronage of any sect or faction, the people of Ireland were 
left at liberty to consider her real situation and interest, and 
happily for herself, I trust in God, she has availed herself of the 
opportunity. With respect to the higher orders even of those 
who thought they had some cause to complain, I know this to be 
the fact ; they are not so blind as not to see the dilTerence be- 
tween being proud and jealous, and punctilious in any claim of 
privilege or right between themselves and their fellow-subjects, 
and the mad and desperate depravity of seeking the redress of 
any dissatisfaction that they might feel, by an appeal to force, or 



OWEN KIRWAN. 233 

to the dreadful recourse to treason and to blood. As to the hum- 
bler orders of our people, for whom I confess I feel the greatest 
sympathy, because there are more of them to be undone, and 
because, from want of education, they must be more liable to 
delusion; I am satisfied the topics to which I have adverted 
apply with still greater force to them than to those who are 
raised above them. I have not the same opportunity of knowing 
their actual opinions ; but if their opinions be other than I think 
they ought to be, would to God they were present in this place, 
or that I had the opportunity of going into their cottages, and 
they well know 1 should not disdain to visit them, and to speak 
to them the language of affection and candour on the subject ; I 
should have little difficulty in showing to their quick and ap- 
prehensive minds, how easy it is, when the heart is incensed, to 
confound the evils which are inseparable from the destiny of im- 
perfect man, with those which arise from the faults or errors of 
his political situation : I would put a few questions to their can- 
did and unadulterated sense : I would ask them — Do you think 
that you have made no advance to civil prosperity within the 
last twenty years ? Are your opinions of modern and subjugated 
France the same that you entertained of popular and revolution- 
ary France fourteen years ago 1 Have you any hope, that if 
the first consul got possession of your island, he would treat you 
half so well as he does those countries at his door, whom he must 
respect more than he can respect or regard you ? And do you 
know how he treats those unhappy nations 1 You know that in 
Ireland there is little personal wealth to plunder — that there are 
few churches to rob. — Can you then doubt that he would re- 
ward his rapacious generals and soldiers by parcelling out the 
soil of the island among them, and by dividing you into lots of 
serfs to till the respective lands to which they belonged ? Can you 
suppose that the perfidy and treason of surrendering your coun- 
try to an invader, would to your new master be any pledge of 
your allegiance 1 Can you suppose that while a single French 
soldier was willing to accept an acre of Irish ground, that he 
would leave that acre in the possession of a man, who had shown 
himself so wickedly and so stupidly dead to the suggestions of the 
most obvious interest, and to the ties of the most imperious moral 
obligations ? What do you look forward to ^\'ith respect to the 
aggrandisement of your sect ? Are you protestants ? He has 
2^ 



234 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

abolished protestantism with Christianity. Are you catholics'? 
Do you think he will raise you to the level of the pope ? Per- 
haps, and I think he would not ; but if he did, could you hope 
more privilege than he has left his holiness 1 And what privilege 
has he left him ? He has reduced his religion to be a mendicant 
for contemptuous toleration, and he has reduced his person to 
beggary and to rags. Let me ask you a further question — Do 
you think he would feel any kind-hearted sympathy for you? 
Answer yourselves by asking, what sympathy does he feel for 
Frenchmen, whom he is ready by thousands to bury in the ocean, 
in the barbarous gambling of his wild ambition ? What sympa- 
thy then could bind him to you ? He is not your countryman — 
the scene of your birth and your childhood is not endeared to his 
heart by the reflection, that it was also the scene of his ; he is 
not your fellow christian — he is not, therefore, bound to you by 
any similarity of duty in this world, or by any union of hope be- 
yond the grave. What then could you suppose the object of his 
visit, or the consequence of his success 1 Can you be so foolish as 
not to see, that he would use you as slaves, while he held you, 
and that when he grew weary, which he soon would become, of 
such a worthless and precarious possession, he would carry you to 
market in some treaty of peace, barter you for some more valuable 
concession, and surrender you to expiate by your punishment and 
degradation, the advantage you had given him by your follies 
and your crimes 1 There is another topic on which a few words 
might be addressed to the deluded peasant of this country : he 
might be asked — What could you hope from the momentary suc- 
cess of any eflbrt to subvert the government by mere intestine 
convulsion ? Could you look forward to the hope of liberty or 
property ; where are the characters, the capacities, and the mo- 
tives of those that have embarked in those chimerical projects — 
you see them a despicable gang of needy adventurers; desperate 
from guilt and poverty ; uncountenanced by a single individual 
of probity or name ; ready to use you as the instruments, and 
equally ready to abandon you by treachery or flight, as the vic- 
tims of their crimes. For a short interval murder and rapine 
might have their sway ; but don't be such a fool as to think, that 
though robbing might make a few persons poor, it could make 
many persons rich. Don't be so silly as to confound the destruc- 
tion of property with the partition of wealth. Small must be 



OWEN KIRWAN. 235 

your share of the spoil, and short your enjoyment of it. Soon, 
trust me, very soon, would such a state of things be terminated 
by tlie very atrocities of its authors. Soon would you find your- 
selves subdued, ruined and degraded. If you looked back, it 
would be to character destroyed, to hope extinguished. If you 
looked forward, you could see only the dire necessity you had 
imposed upon your governors of acting towards you with no feel- 
ing but those of abhorrence, and of self-preservation — of ruling 
you by a system of coercion, of which alone you would be worthy 
— and of loading you with taxes (that is, selling the food and rai- 
ment which your honest labour might earn for your family,) to 
defray the expense of that force, by which only you could be re- 
strained. 

Say not, gentlemen, that I am inexcusably vain when I say, 
would to God that I had an opportunity of speaking this plain, 
and, I trust, not absurd language to the humblest orders of my 
countrymen. When I see what sort of missionaries can preach 
the doctrines of villany and folly with success, I cannot think it 
very vain to suppose, that they would listen with some attention 
and some respect to a man who was addressing plain sense to 
their minds, whose whole life ought to be a pledge for his sin- 
cerity and affection — who had never in a single instance deceiv- 
ed, or deserted, or betrayed them — who had never been seduced 
to an abandonment of their just rights, or a connivance at any of 
their excesses, that could threaten any injury to their character. 

But perhaps, said Mr. Curran, I have trespassed too much 
upon your patience by what may appear a digression from the 
question. The motive of my doing so, I perceive by your indul- 
gent hearing, you perfectly comprehend. But I do not consider 
what I have said as a mere irrelevant digression with respect to 
the immediate cause before you. The reasoning comes to this : 
the present state of this country shows, that nothing could be so 
stupidly and perversely wicked as a project of separation, or of 
French connexion — and, of course, nothing more improbable than 
the adoption of such a useless project. If it be then so senseless, 
and therefore so improbable, how strong ought the evidence be, 
on wdiich you would be warranted in attesting, on your oaths, to 
England and to France, so odious an imputation on the good 
sense and loyalty of your country. Let me revert again to the 
evidence which you have heard to support so incredible a charge. 



236 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

I have already observed on the contemptible smallness of the 
number — a few drunken peasants assemble in the outlets; there, 
in the fury of intoxication they committed such atrocities as no 
man can be disposed to defend or to extenuate ; and having done 
so, they fly before a few peace ofiicers, aided by the gallantry of 
Mr. Justice Drury — who, even if he did retreat, as has been insin- 
uated, has at least the merit of having no wish to shed the blood 
of his fellow christians, and is certainly entitled to the praise of 
preserving the life of a most valuable citizen and loyal subject. 

In this whole transaction, no attempt, however feeble or ill- 
directed, is made on any place belonging to or connected with 
the government. They never even approach the barrack, the 
castle, the magazines. No leader whatsoever appears ; nothing 
that I can see to call for your verdict, except the finding the bill 
and the uncorroborated statement of the attorney-general. 
In that statement, too, I must beg leave to guard you against 
mistake in one or two particulars : — as to what he said of my 
lord Kilwarden, it was not unnatural to feel as he seemed to do, 
at the recollection, nor to have stated that sad event as a fact 
that took place on that occasion — but I am satisfied, he did not 
state it with the least intention of agitating your passions, or 
letting it have the smallest influence on your judgment in your 
inquiry into a charge of treason. I must beg leave also to say, 
that no recital in any statute, is any evidence whatsoever of the 
existence of any particular fact of treason or treasonable conspi- 
racy. I must further desire you to blot completely from your 
minds the reference which he was pleased to make to the ver- 
dict of yesterday. And, in truth, when I see the evidence on 
which you are to decide reduced to what is legal or admissible, 
I don't wonder that Mr. Attorney-general himself should have 
treated this doughty rebellion with the laughter and contempt it 
deserved. 

Where now is this providential escape of the government and 
the castle ? Why simply in this, that nobody attacked either the 
one or the other ; and that there were no persons that could have 
attacked either. It seems not unlike the escape which a young 
man had of being shot through the head at the battle of Dettin- 
gen, by the providential interference by which he was sent 
twenty miles off on a foraging party only ten days before the battle. 

I wish from my heart that there may be now present some 



OWEN KIRWAN. 237 

worthy gentleman, who may transmit to Paris a faithful account 
of what has this day passed. If so, I think some loyal absentee 
may possibly find an account of it in the Publiciste or the Moni- 
teur — and perhaps somewhat in this way — " On the 23d of July 
last, a most splendid rebellion displayed her standard in the me- 
tropolis of Ireland, in a part of the city which in their language 
is called the Poddle. The band of heroes that came forth at the 
call of4)atriotism, capable of bearing arms, at the lowest calcu- 
lation must have amounted to little less than txw hundred persons. 
The rebellion advanced with most intrepid step till she came to the 
site of the old four courts, and tholsel. There she espied a de- 
cayed pillory, on which she mounted, in order to reconnoitre, but 
she found to her great mortification that the rebels had staid be- 
hind. She therefore judged it right to make her escape, which 
she effected in a masterly manner down Dirlij lane. The rebels 
at the same time retiring in some disorder from the Poddle, being 
hard pressed by the poles and lanterns of the watchmen, and 
being additionally galled by Mr. Justice Drury, who came to a 
most unerring aim upon their rere, on which he played without 
any intermission, with a spy-glass, from his dining-room window — 
Raro antecedentem celestum deserit Pcenapede claudo. It is clearly 
ascertained that she did not appear in her own clothes, for 
she threw away her regimental jacket before she fled, which has 
been picked up, and is now to be seen at Mr. Carleton's, at six 
pence a head for grown persons, and three pence for a nurse and 
child. It was thought at first to be the work of an Irish artist, 
who might have taken measure in the absence of the wearer, 
but by a bill and receipt found in one of the pockets, it appears 
to have been made by the actual body tailor of her august high- 
ness the consort of the first consul. At present it is but poorly 
ornamented ; but it is said that the Irish volunteers have entered 
into a subscription to tmn it, if it shall be ever worn again." — 
Happy, most happy, it is for these islands, said Mr. Curran, that 
those rumours which are so maliciously invented and circulated 
to destroy our confidence in each other, to invite attack and 
dispirit resistance, turn out on inquiry to be so ludicrous and con- 
temptible, that we cannot speak of them without laughter, or 
without wonder that they did not rather form the materials of a 
farce in a puppet show, than of a grave prosecution in a court 
of justice. 



238 SPEECH IN DEFENCE OF 

Mr. Curran said, there was still another topic material to re- 
mind the jury of: this was the first trial for treason that occurred 
since the union of these islands. He said no effectual union could 
be achieved by the mere letter of statute ; don't imagine (said he) 
that bigotry could blend with liberality, or barbarism with ci- 
vilization. If you wish to be really united with Great Britain, 
teach her to respect you, and do so by showing her that you are 
fit objects of wholesome laws ; by showing that you are capable 
of rising to a proud equality with her in the exercise of social 
duties and civil virtues, as many parts of the globe have proved 
you to be in her fleets and her armies ; — show her that you can 
try this cause as she would try it ; that you have too much sense 
and humanity to be borne away in your verdict by despicable 
panic or brutal fury ; — show her that in prosecutions by the state, 
you can even go a step beyond her, and that you can discover 
and act upon those eternal principles of justice, which it has been 
found necessary in that country to enforce by the coercion of 
law : you cannot, said he, but feel that I allude to their statute 
that requires two witnesses in treason. Our statute does not 
contain that provision ; but if it was wise to enact it there as a 
law, it cannot be other than wise to adopt it here as a principle ; 
unless you think it discreet to hold it out as your opinion, that 
the life of a man is not as valuable here, and ought not to be as 
secure, as in the other part of the empire ; unless you wish to 
prove your capability of equal rights and equal liberty with 
Britain, by consigning to the scaffold your miserable fellow sub- 
ject, who, if tried in England on the same charge and the same 
evidence, would by law be entitled to a verdict of acquittal. I 
trust you will not so blemish yourselves ; I trust you will not be 
satisfied even with a cold imitation of her justice ; but that on 
this occasion you will give her an example of magnanimity by 
rising superior to the passion or the panic of the moment. If 
in any ordinary case, in any ordinary time, you have any reason- 
able doubt of guilt, you are bound by every principle of law and 
justice to acquit. But I would advise you, at a time like this, 
rather to be lavish than parsimonious in the application of that 
principle — even though you had the strongest suspicion of his 
culpability I would advise you to acquit — you would show your 
confidence in your own strength, that you felt your situation too 
high to be affected in the smallest degree by the fate of so insig- 



OWEN KIRWAN. 239 

nificant an individual ; turn to the miserable prisoner himself — 
tainted and blemished, as he possibly may be — even him you 
may retrieve to his country and his duty by a salutary effort of 
seasonable magnanimity. You will inspire him with reverence 
for that institution, which knows when to spare, as well as when 
to inflict — and which, instead of sacrificing him to a strong sus- 
picion of his criminality, is determined, not by the belief, but by 
the possibility of his innocence, and dismisses him with indigna- 
tion and contemptuous mercy. 

Mr. Kirwan was found guilty. 



3G 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

IN BEHALF OF 

THE REV. CHARLES MASSY, 

AGMNST TIIE MARQUIS OF HEADFORD, FOR CRIMINAL CONVERSATION 
WITH PLAINTIFF'S WIFE. 

At Ennis Assizes, Co. Clake, on the 27th of July, 1804. 
Damages laid at 4:0,0^01— Verdict, 10,000/. 



Mr. Curran. — Never so clearly as in the present instance have 
1 observed that safeguard of justice, which providence hath placed 
in the nature of man. Such is the imperious dominion with 
which truth and reason wave their sceptre over the human in- 
tellect, that no solicitations however artful, no talent however 
commanding, can reduce it from its allegiance. In proportion 
to the humility of our submission to its rule do we rise into some 
faint emulation of that ineffable and presiding divinity, whose 
characteristic attribute it is — to be coerced and bound by the in- 
exorable laws of his own nature, so as to be all-wise and all-just 
from necessity, rather than election. You have seen it in the 
learned advocate who has preceded me most peculiarly and 
strikingly illustrated — you have seen even his great talents, per- 
haps the first in any country, languishing under a cause too weak 
to catrij him, and too heavy to be carried by him. He was forced 
to dismiss his natural candour and sincerity, and having no merits 
in his case, to substitute the dignity of his own manner, the re- 
sources of his own ingenuity, over the overwhelming difficulties 
with which he was surrounded. Wretched client! unhappy 
advocate ! what a combination do you form ! But such is the 
condition of guilt — its commission mean and tremulous — its de- 
fence artificial and insincere — its prosecution candid and simple — 

240 



THE REV. CHARLES MASSY. 241 

5ts condemnation dignified and austere. Such has been the 
defendant's guilt — such his defence — such shall be my address — ■ 
and such, I trust, your verdict. The learned counsel has told you, 
that this unfortunate woman is not to be estimated at forty thou- 
sand pounds — fatal and unquestionable is the truth of this as- 
sertion. Alas ! gentlemen, she is no longer worth any thing — 
faded, fallen, degraded, and disgraced, she is worth less than no- 
thing ! But it is for the honour, the hope, the expectation, the 
tenderness, and the comforts that have been blasted by the de- 
fendant, and have fled for ever, that you are to remunerate the 
plaintiff, by the punishment of the defendant. It is not her pre- 
sent value which you are to weigh — but it is her value at that 
time, when she sat basking in a husband's love, with the bless- 
ing of heaven on her head, and its purity in her heart : when she 
sat amongst her family, and administered the morality of the pa- 
rental board: — estimate that past value — compare it with its 
present deplorable diminution — and it may lead you to form 
some judgment of the severity of the injury, and the extent of 
the compensation. 

The learned counsel has told you, you ought to be cautious, 
because your verdict cannot be set aside for excess. The as- 
sertion is just, but has he treated you fairly by its application ? 
His cause would not allow him to be fair — for, why is the rule 
adopted in this single action ? Because, this being pecuharly an 
injury to the most susceptible of all human feelings — it leaves 
the injury of the husband to be ascertained by the sensibility of 
the jury, and does not presume to measure the justice of their 
determination by the cold and chilly exercise of his own discretion. 
In any other action it is easy to calculate. If a tradesman's arm is 
cut off, you can measure the loss which he has sustained — but 
the wound of feeling, and the agony of the heart, cannot be 
judged by any standard with which I am acquainted. And 
you are unfairly dealt with, when you are called on to appre- 
ciate the present suffering of the husband by the present guilt, 
delinquency, and degradation of his wife. As well might you, if 
called on to give compensation to a man for the murder of his 
dearest friend — find the measure of his injury, by weighing the 
ashes of the dead. But it is not, gentlemen of the jury, by 
weighing the ashes of the dead, that you would estimate the loss 
of the survivor. 
2 h 



242 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

The learned counsel has referred you to other cases, and other 
countries, for instances of moderate verdicts. I can refer you 
to some authentic instances of just ones. In the next country, 
15,000Z. against a subaltern officer. In Travers and M'Carthy, 
5000/. against a servant. In Tighe against Jones, 10,000/. 
against a man not worth a shilling. What then ought to be the 
rule, where rank, and power, and wealth, and station, have com- 
bined to render the example of his crime more dangerous — to 
make his guilt more odious — to make the injury to the plaintiff 
more grievous, because more conspicuous ? I affect no levelling 
familiarity when I speak of persons in the higher ranks of society 
— distinctions of orders are necessary, and I always feel disposed 
to treat them with respect — but when it is my duty to speak of 
the crimes by which they are degraded, I am not so fastidious as to 
shrink from their contact, when to touch them is essential to their 
dissection. In this action, the condition, the conduct, and cir- 
cumstances of the party, are justly and peculiarly the objects of 
your consideration. Who are the parties ? The plaintiff", young, 
amiable, of family and education. Of the generous disinterest- 
edness of his heart you can form an opinion even from the evi- 
dence of the defendant, that he declined an alliance, which would 
have added to his fortune and consideration, and which he re- 
jected for an unportioned union with his present wife. She too, 
at that time young, beautiful and accomplished ; and feeling her 
affection for her husband increase, in proportion as she remem- 
bered the ardour of his love, and the sincerity of his sacrifice. 
Look now to the defendant ! — I blush to name him ! — I blush to 
name a rank which he has tarnished — and a patent that he has 
worse than cancelled. High in the army — high in the state — 
the hereditary counsellor of the king — of wealth incalculable — 
and to this last I advert with an indignant and contemptuous 
satisfaction, because, as the only instrument of his guilt and 
shame, it will be the means of his punishment, and the source of 
compensation for his guilt. 

But let me call your attention distinctly to the questions you 
have to consider. The first is the fact of guilt. Is this noble 
lord guilty ? His counsel knew too well how they would have 
mortified his vanity, had they given the smallest reason to doubt 
the splendour of his achievement. Against any such humiliating 
suspicion he had taken the most studious precaution by the pub- 



THE REV. CHARLES MASSY. 243 

licily of the exploit. And here, in this court, and before you and 
in the face of the country, has he the unparalleled effrontery of 
disdaining to resort even to a cofifessio?i of iimocetice. — His guilt 
established, your next question is, the damages you should give. 
You have been told, that the amount of the damages should de- 
pend on circumstances. You will consider these circumstances, 
whether of aggravation or mitigation. His learned counsel con- 
tend, that the plaintiff has been the author of his own suffering, 
and ought to receive no compensation for the ill consequences of 
his own conduct. In what part of the evidence do you find any 
foundation for that assertion? He indulged her, it seems, in 
dress — generous and attached, he probably indulged her in that 
point beyond his means ; and the defendant now imprudently 
calls on you to find an excuse for the adulterer in the fondness 
and liberality of her husband. But you have been told that the 
husband connived. Odious and imprudent aggravation of injury 
— to add calumny to insult, and outrage to dishonour. From 
whom, but a man hackneyed in the paths of shame and vice — 
from whom, but from a man having no compunctions in his own 
breast to restrain him, could you expect such brutal disregard 
for the feelings of others — from whom, but the cold-blooded vet- 
eran seducer — from what, but from the exhausted mind — the 
habitual community with shame — from what, but the habitual 
contempt of virtue and of man, could you have expected the ar- 
rogance, the barbarity, and folly of so foul — because so false an 
imputation? He should have reflected — and have blushed, be- 
fore he suffered so vile a topic of defence to have passed his lips. 
But, ere you condemn, let him have the benefit of the excuse, if 
the excuse be true. You must have observed how his counsel 
fluttered and vibrated, between what they called connivance 
and injudicious confidence ; and how, in affecting to distinguish 
they have confounded them both together. — If the plaintiff' has 
connived, I freely say to you, do not reward the wretch who has 
prostituted his wife, and surrendered his own honour — do not 
compensate the pander of his own shame, and the willing in- 
strument of his own infamy. But as there is no sum so low to 
which such a defence, if true, ought not to reduce your verdict, 
so neither is any so high to which such a charge ought not to in- 
flame it, if such a charge be false. Where is the single fact in 
this case on which the remotest suspicion of connivance can be 



244 SPEECH IN BEHALF OP 

hung ? — Odiously has the defendant endeavoured to make the 
softest and most amiahle feelings of the heart the pretext of his 
slanderous imputations. An ancient and respectable prelate, the 
husband of his wife's sister, chained down to the bed of sickness, 
perhaps to the bed of death. In that distressing situation my 
client suffered that wife to be the bearer of consolation to the 
bosom of her sister — he had not the heart to refuse her — and 
the softness of his nature is now charged on him as a crime. He 
is now insolently told, that he connived at his dishonour, and that 
he ought to have foreseen, that the mansion of sickness and of 
sorrow would have been made the scene of assignation and of guilt. 
On this charge of connivance I will not farther weary you or ex- 
haust myself — I will add nothing more, than that it is as false as 
it is impudent — that in the evidence it has not a colour of sup- 
port ; and that by your verdict you should mark it with repro- 
bation. The other subject, namely, that he was indiscreet in 
his confidence, does, I think, call for some discussion — for I trust 
you see that I affect not any address to your passions, by which 
you may be led away from the subject — 1 presume merely to sepa- 
rate the parts of this affecting case, and to lay them item by 
item before you, with the coldness of detail, and not with any 
colouring or display of fiction or of fancy. — Honourable to him- 
self was his unsuspecting confidence, but fatal must we admit it 
to have been, when we look to the abuse committed upon it : 
but where was the guilt of this indiscretion ? He did admit this 
noble lord to pass his threshold as his guest. Now the charge 
which this noble lord builds on this indiscretion is — " thou fool — 
thou hadst confidence in my honour — and that was a guilty in- 
discretion. — Thou simpleton, thou thoughtest that an admitted 
and a cherished guest, would have respected the laws of honour 
and hospitality, and thy indiscretion was guilt. — Thou thoughtest 
that he would have shrunk from the meanness and barbarity of 
requiting kindness with treachery, — and thy indiscretion was 
guilt." 

Gentlemen, what horrid alternative in the treatment of wives 
would such reasoning recommend ? Are they to be immured by 
worse than eastern barbarity ? Are their principles to be de- 
praved, their passions sublimated, every finer motive of action 
extinguished by the inevitable consequences of thus treating them 
like slaves ? Or is a liberal and generous confidence in them to 



THE REV. CHARLES MASSY. 245 

be the passport of the adulterer, and the justification of his 
crimes ? 

Honourably, but fatally for his own repose, he was neither 
jealous, suspicious, nor cruel. — He treated the defendant with 
the confidence of a friend — and his wife with the tenderness of a 
husband. — He did leave to the noble marquis the physical pos- 
sibility of committing against him the greatest crime which can 
be perpetrated against a being of an amiable heart and refined 
education. — In the middle of the day, at the moment of divine 
worship, when the miserable husband was on his knees, directing 
the prayers and thanksgiving of his congregation to their God — 
that moment did the remorseless adulterer choose to carry off the 
deluded victim from her husband — from her child — from her 
character — from her happiness — as if, not content to leave his 
crime confined to its miserable aggravations, unless he gave it a 
cast and colour of factitious sacrilege and impiety. Oh ! how 
happy had it been when he arrived at the bank of the river 
with the ill-fated fugitive, ere yet he had committed her to that 
boat, of which, like the fabled barque of Styx, the exile was 
eternal, how happy at that moment, so teeming with misery and 
with shame, if you, my lord, had met him, and could have accost- 
ed him in the character of that good genius which had abandoned 
him. How impressively might you have pleaded the cause of 
the father, of the child, of the mother, and even of the worthless 
defendant himself. You would have said, " is this the requital 
that you are about to make for respect and kindness, and confi- 
dence in your honour 1 Can you deliberately expose this young 
man, in the bloom of life, with all his hopes before him ? Can 
you expose him, a wretched outcast from society, to the scorn 
of a merciless world ? Can you set him adrift upon the tempes- 
tuous ocean of his own passions, at this early season when they 
are most headstrong ; and can you cut him out from the moor- 
ings of those domestic obligations by whose cable he might ride 
at safety from their turbulence ? Think of, if you can conceive 
it, what a powerful influence arises from the sense of home, 
from the sacred rehgion of the hearth in quelling the passions, in 
reclaiming the wanderings, in correcting the discords of the hu- 
man heart ; do not cruelly take from him the protection of these 
attachments. But if j'^ou have no pity for the father, have mercy 
at least upon his innocent and helpless child ; do not condemn 



246 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

him to an education scandalous or neglected, — do not strike him 
into that most dreadful of all human conditions, the orphanage 
that springs not from the grave, that falls not from the hand of 
Providence, or the stroke of death ; but comes before its time, 
anticipated and inflicted by the remorseless cruelty of parental 
guilt. For the poor victim herself— not yet immolated — while 
yet balancing upon the pivot of her destiny, your heart could not 
be cold, nor your tongue be wordless. You would have said to 
him, pause, my lord, while there is yet a moment foi- reflection. 
What are your motives, what your views, what your prospects 
from what you are about to do? You are a married man, the 
husband of the most amiable and respectable of women ; you can- 
not look to the chance of marrying this wretched fugitive ; be- 
tween you and such an event there are two sepulchres to pass. 
What are your inducements ? Is it love, think you ? No, — do 
not give that name to any attraction you can find in the faded 
refuse of a violated bed. Love is a noble and generous passion ; 
it can be founded only on a pure and ardent friendship, on an 
exalted respect, on an implicit confidence in its object. .Search 
your heart, examine your judgment, do you find the semblance 
of any one of these sentiments to bind you to her 1 what could 
degrade a mind to which nature or education had given port, or 
stature, or character, into a friendship for her ? Could you re- 
pose upon her faith ? Look in her face, my lord ; she is at this 
moment giving you the violation of the most sacred of human 
obligations as the pledge of her fidelity. — She is giving you the 
most irrefragable proof that, as she is deserting her husband for 
you, so she would without a scruple abandon you for another. 
Do you anticipate any pleasure you might feel in the possible 
event of your becoming the parents of a common child ? She is 
at this moment proving to you that she is as dead to the sense of 
parental as of conjugal obligation ; and that she would abandon 
your offspring to-morrow, with the same facility with which she 
now deserts her own. Look then at her conduct, as it is, as the 
world must behold it,' blackened by every aggravation that can 
make it either odious or contemptible, and unrelieved by a sin- 
gle circumstance of mitigation, that could palUate its guilt, or 
retrieve it from abhorrence. 

Mean, however, and degraded as this woman must be, she 
will still (if you take her with you) have strong and heavy claims 



THE REV. CHARLES MASSY. 347 

upon you. — The force of such claims does certainly depend upon 
circumstances; before, therefore, you expose her fate to the 
dreadful risque of your caprice or ingratitude, in mercy to her 
weigh well the confidence she can place in your future justice 
and honour : at that future time, much nearer than you think, 
by what topics can her cause be pleaded to a sated appetite, to 
a heart that repels her, to a just judgment in which she never 
could have been valued or respected ? Here is not the case of 
an unmarried woman, with whom a pure and generous friend- 
ship may insensibly have ripened into a more serious attachment, 
until at last her heart became too deeply pledged to be re-as- 
sumed : if so circumstanced, without any husband to betray, or 
child to desert, or motive to restrain, except what related solely 
to herself, her anxiety for your happiness made her overlook 
every other consideration, and commit her history to your honour; 
in such a case, (the strongest and the highest that man's imagi- 
nation can suppose ;) in which you at least could see nothing but 
the most noble and disinterested sacrifice ; in which you could 
find nothing but what claimed from you the most kind and ex- 
alted sentiment of tenderness, and devotion, and respect ; and in 
which the most fastidious rigour would find so much more subject 
for sympathy than blame : — let me ask you, could you, even in 
that case, answer for your own justice and gratitude? I do not 
allude to the long and pitiful catalogue of paltry adventures, in 
which it seems your time has been employed. — The coarse and 
vulgar succession of casual connexions, joyless, loveless, and un- 
endeared : but do you not find upon your memory some trace of 
an engagement of the character I have sketched? — Has not your 
sense of what you would owe in such a case, and to such a wo- 
man, been at least once put to the test of experiment 1 Has it 
not once at least happened that such a woman, with all the 
resolution of strong faith, flung her youth, her hope, her beauty, 
her talent, upon your bosom, weighed you against the world, 
which she found but a feather in the scale, and took you as an 
equivalent? How did you then acquit yourself? Did you prove 
yourself worthy of the sacred trust reposed in you ? Did your 
spirit so associate with hers, as to leave her no room to regret 
the splendid and disinterested sacrifice she had made ? Did her 
soul find a pillow in the tenderness of yours, and support in its 
firmness ? Did you preserve her high in your own consciousness, 
3H 



248 SPEECH TN BEHAT.P OF 

proud in your admiration and fiicndsliip, and happy in your af 
fection ? You might have so acted, and the man that was wor- 
thy of her would liave perished rather than not so act, as to 
make her dchghted with having confided so sacred a trust to his 
honour. — Did you so act ? Did she feel that, however precious 
to your heart, she was still more exalted and honoured in your 
reverence and respect? Or did she find you coarse and paltry, 
fluttering and unpurposed, unfeeling, and ungrateful 1 You 
found her a fair and hlushing flower, its beauty and its fragrance 
bathed in the dews of heaven. Did you so tenderly transplant 
it, as to preserve that beauty and fragrance unimpaired? Or 
did you so rudely cut it, as to interrupt its nutriment, to waste 
its sweetness, to blast its beauty, to bow down its faded and sickly 
head? And did you at last fling it like "a loathsome weed 
away ?" If then to such a woman, so clothed with every title 
that could ennoble, and exalt, and endear her to the heart of 
man, you would be cruelly and capriciously deficient, how can a 
wretched fugitive like this, in every point her contrast, hope to 
find you just? Send her then away. Send her back to her 
home, to her child, to her husband, to herself." Alas, there was 
none to hold such language to this noble defendant ; he did not 
hold it to himself. But he paraded his despicable prize in his 
own carriage, with his own retinue, his own servants — this vete- 
ran Paris hawked liis enamoured Helen from this western quar- 
ter of the island to a sea-port in the eastern, crowned with the 
acclamations of a senseless and grinning rabble, glorying and de- 
lighted, no doubt, in the leering and scofling admiration of 
grooms, and ostlers, and waiters, as he passed. 

In this odious contempt of every personal feeling, of public 
opinion, of common humanity, did he parade this woman to the 
sea-port, whence he transported his precious cargo to a country, 
where her example may be less mischievous than in her own ; 
where I agree with my learned colleague in heartily wishing he 
may remain with her for ever. We are too poor, too simple, too 
unadvanced a country, for the example of such achievements. 
When the relaxation of morals is the natural growth and conse- 
quence of the great progress of arts and wealth, it is accompa- 
nied by a refinement, that makes it less gross and shocking : but 
for such palliations we are at least a century too young. I ad- 
vise you, therefore, most earnestly to rebuke this budding mis- 



THE REV. CHARLES MASSY. 249 

chief, by letting the wholesome vigour and chastisement of a 
liberal verdict speak what you think of its enormity. In every 
point of view in which I can look at the subject, I see you are 
called upon to give a verdict of bold, and just, and indignant, and 
exemplary compensation. The injury of. the plaintiff demands 
it from your justice ; the delinquency of the defendant provokes 
it by its enormity. The rank on which he has relied for impu- 
nity calls upon you to tell him, that crime does not ascend to the 
rank of the perpetrator, but the perpetrator sinks from his rank, 
and descends to the level of his delinquency. The style and 
mode of his defence is a gross aggravation of his conduct, and a 
gross insult upon you. Look upon the different subjects of his 
defence as you ought, and let him profit by them as he deserves ; 
vainly presumptuous upon his rank, he wishes to overawe you by 
the despicable consideration. He next resorts to a cruel asper- 
sion upon the character of the unhappy plaintiff, whom he had 
already wounded beyond the possibility of reparation ; he has 
ventured to charge him with connivance : as to that, I will only 
say, gentlemen of the jury, do not give this vain boaster a pre- 
text for saying, that if her husband connived in the offence, the 
jury also connived in the reparation. But he has pressed another 
curious topic upon you. After the plaintiff had cause to suspect 
his designs, and the likelihood of their being fatally successful, he 
did not then act precisely as he ought. Gracious God, what an 
argument for him to dare to advance ! It is saying this to him : 
" I abused your confidence, your hospitality; 1 laid a base plan 
for the seduction of the wife of your bosom ; I succeeded at last, 
so as to throw in upon you that most dreadful of all suspicions to a 
man fondly attached, proud of his wife's honour, and tremblingly 
alive to his own ; that you were possibly a dupe to the confidence 
in the wife, as much as in the guest : in this so pitiable distress, 
which I myself had studiously and deliberately contrived for you, 
between hope and fear, and doubt and love, and jealousy and 
shame ; one moment shrinking from the cruelty of your suspicion ; 
the next, fired with indignation at the facility and credulity of 
your acquittal ; in this labyrinth of doubt, in this phrensy of suf- 
fering, you were not collected and composed ; yoti did not act as 
you might have done, if I had not worked you to madness ; and 
upon that very madness which I have inflicted upon you, upon 
the very completion of my guilt, and of your misery, I will build 
2i 



250 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

my defence. Yon did not act critically right, and therefore are 
unworthy of compensation." Gentlemen, can you be dead to the 
remorseless atrocity of such a defence ! And shall not your 
honest verdict mark it as it deserves 1 But let me go a little 
further ; let me ask you, for I confess I have no distinct idea, of 
what should be the conduct of an husband so placed, and who is 
to act critically right ? Shall he lock her up, or turn her out, or 
enlarge or abridge her liberty of acting as she pleases? Oh, 
dreadful Areopagus of the tea-table ! how formidable thy in- 
quests, how tremendous thy condemnations ! In the first case he 
is brutal and barbarous, an odious eastern despot. In the next ; 
what ! turn an innocent woman out of his house, without evidence 
or proof, but merely because he is vile and mean enough to sus- 
pect the wife of his bosom, and the mother of his child ! Between 
these extremes, what intermediate degree is he to adopt ? I put 
this question to you at this moment, — uninfluenced by any pas- 
sion as you now are, but cool and collected, and uninterested as 
you must be, do you see clearly this proper and exact line, which 
the plaintiff should have pursued ? I must question if you do ? 
But if you did or could, must you not say, that he was the last 
man from whom you should expect the coolness to discover, or 
the steadiness to pursue it ? And yet this is the outrageous and 
insolent defence that is put forward to you. My miserable client, 
when his brain was on fire, and every fiend of hell was let loose 
upon his heart, he should then, it seems, have placed himself be- 
fore his mirror, he should have taught the stream of agony to 
flow decorously down his forehead ; he should have composed his 
features to harmony ; he should have writhed with grace, and 
groaned in melody. But look farther to this noble defendant, 
and his honourable defence ; the wretched woman is to be suc- 
cessively the victim of seduction, and of slander. = She it seems 
received marked attentibns — here, I confess, I felt myself not a 
httle at a loss. The witnesses could not describe what these 
marked attentions were, or are. They consisted, not, if you be- 
lieve the *vitnesses that swore to them, in any personal approach, 
or contact whatsoever ; nor in any unwarrantable topics of dis- 
course. Of wkat materials then were they composed ? Why, it 
seems, a gentleman had the insolence at table to propose to her 
a glass of wine, and she, oh most abandoned lady ! instead of fly- 
ing like an angry parrot at his head, and besmirching and be 



THE REV. CHARLES MASSY. 251 

scratching liim for his insolence, tamely and basely replies, * port, 
sir, if you please.' But, gentlemen, why do I advert to this folly, 
this nonsense 1 Not surely to vindicate from censure the most 
innocent, and the most delightful intercourse of social kindness, 
or harmless and cheerful courtesy — " where virtue is, these are 
most virtuous." But I am soliciting your attention, and your 
feeling, to the mean and odious aggravation ; to the unblushing 
and remorseless barbarity, of falsely aspersing the wretched 
woman he had undone. One good he has done ; he has disclosed 
to you the point in which he can feel ; for how imperious must 
that avarice be, which could resort to so vile an expedient of 
frugality? Yes, 1 will say, that with the common feelings of a 
man, he would have rather suffered his thirty thousand a year to 
go as a compensation to the plaintiff, than saved a shilling of it 
by so vile an expedient of economy. He would rather have 
starved with her in a gaol, he would rather have sunk with her 
into the ocean, than have so vilified her, than have so degraded 
himself. — But it seems, gentlemen, and indeed you have been 
told, that long as the course of his gallantries has been, and he 
has grov^'n grey in the service, it is the first time he has been 
called upon for damages. To how many might it have been 
fortunate, if he had not that impunity to boast ? Your verdict 
will, I trust, put an end to that encouragement to guilt, that is 
built upon impunity : the devil it seems has saved the noble mar- 
quis harmless in the past ; but your verdict will tell him the term 
of that indemnity is expired, that his old friend and banker has 
no more effects in his hands, and that if he draws any more upon 
him, he must pay his own bills himself. You will do much good 
by doing so ; you may not enlighten his conscience, nor touch his 
heart, but his frugality will understand the hint. It will adopt 
the prudence of age, and deter him from pursuits, in which, 
though he may be insensible of shame, he will not be regardless 
of expense. You will do more, you will not only punish him in 
his tender point, but you will weaken him in his strong one, his 
money. We have heard much of this noble lord's wealth, and 
much of his exploits, but not much of his accomplishments or his 
wit. I know not that his verses have soared even to the poet's 
corner. I have heard it said, that an ass laden with gold could 
find his way through the gate of the strongest city. But, gentle- 
men, lighten the load upon his back, and you will completely 



252 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

curtail the mischievous faculty of a grave animal whose momen- 
tum lies, not in his agility, but his weight ; not in the quantity of 
motion, but the quantity of his matter. There is another ground, 
on which you are called upon to give most liberal damages, and 
that has been laid by the unfeeling vanity of the defendant. This 
business has been marked by the most elaborate publicity. It is 
very clear that he has been allured by the glory of the chace, 
and not the value of the game. The poor object of his pursuit 
could be of no value to him, or he could not have so wantonly, 
and cruelly, and unnecessarily abused her. He might easily have 
kept this unhappy intercourse an unsuspected secret. Even if 
he wished for her elopement, he might easily have so contrived 
it, that the place of her retreat would be profoundly undiscover- 
able ; yet, though even the expense, a point so tender to his 
delicate sensibility, of concealing, could not be a one fortieth of 
the cost of publishing her, his vanity decided him in favour of 
glory and publicity. By that election he has in fact put forward 
the Irish nation, and its character, so often and so variously ca- 
lumniated, upon its trial before the tribunal of the empire ; and 
your verdict will this day decide, whether an Irish jury can feel 
with justice, and spirit, upon a subject that involves conjugal af- 
fection and comfort, domestic honour and repose — the certainty 
of issue — the weight of public opinion — the gilded and presump- 
tuous criminality of overweening rank and station. I doubt not, 
but he is at this moment reclined on a silken sofa, anticipating 
that submissive and modest verdict, by which you will lean gently 
on his errors ; and expecting from your patriotism, no doubt, that 
you will think again, and again, before you condemn any great 
portion of the immense revenue of a great absentee, to be de- 
tained in the nation that produced it, instead of being trans- 
mitted, as it ought, to be expended in the splendour of another 
country. He is now probably waiting for the arrival of the re- 
port of this day, which I understand, a famous note-taker has 
been sent hither to collect. (Let not the gentleman be disturbed.) 
Gentlemen, let me assure you, it is more, much more the trial of 
you, than of the noble marquis, of which this imported recorder 
is at this moment collecting the materials. His noble employer 
is now expecting a report to the following effect : " Such a day 
came on to be tried at Emiis, by a special jury, the cause of 
Charles Massy against the most noble, the marquis of Headfort. It 



THE REV. CHARLES MASSY. 253 

appeared, that the plaintiff's wife was young, beautiful, and cap- 
tivating. The plaintiff himself, a person fond of this beautiful 
creature to distraction, and both doating on their child ; but the 
noble marquis approached her, the plume of glory nodded on his 
head. Not the goddess Minerva, but the goddess Venus had 
lighted up his casque, " the fire that never tires — such as many 
a lady gay had been dazzled with before." At the first advance 
she trembled, at the second she struck to the redoubted son of 
Mars, and pupil of Venus. The jury saw it was not his fault ; 
(it was an Irish jury ;) they felt compassion for the tenderness of 
the mother's heart, and for the warmth of the lover's passion. 
The jury saw on the one side, a young, entertaining gallant, on 
the other, a beauteous creature, of charms irresistible. They 
recollected, that Jupiter had been always successful in his 
amours, although Vulcan had not always escaped some awkward 
accidents. The jury was composed of fathers, brothers, husbands 
— but they had not the vulgar jealousy, that views little things 
of that sort with rigour, and wishing to assimilate their country 
in every respect to England now that they are united to it, they, 
like English gentlemen, returned to their box with a verdict of 
six pence damages and six pence costs." Let this be sent to Eng- 
land. I promise you, your odious secret wdll not be kept better 
than that of the wTetched Mrs. Massy. There is not a bawdy 
Chronicle in London, in which the epitaph which you would have 
written on yourselves will not be published, and our enemies will 
delight in the spectacle of our precocious depravity, in seeing 
that we can be rotten before w^e are ripe. I do not suppose it ; I 
do not, cannot, will not believe it ; I will not harrow up myself 
with the anticipated apprehension. 

There is another consideration, gentlemen, which I think most 
imperiously demands even a vindictive award of exemplary dam- 
ages — and that is the breach of hospitality. To us peculiarly 
does it belong to avenge the violation of its altar. The hospi- 
tality of other countries is a matter of necessity or convention, 
in savage nations of the first, in polished, of the latter ; but the 
liospitality of an Irishman is not the running account of posted and 
and ledgered courtesies, as in other countries ; — it springs like all 
his quahties, his faults, his virtues — directly from his heart. The 
heart of an Irishman is by nature bold, and he confides ; it is 
tender, and he loves ; it is generous, and he gives ; it is social. 



254 SPEECH IN BEHALF OF 

and he is hospitable. This sacrilegious intruder has profaned 
the religion of that sacred altar so elevated in our \vorship, so 
precious to our devotion ; and it is our privilege to avenge the 
crime. . You must either pull down the altar, and abolish the 
w^orship, or you must preserve its sanctity undebased. There is 
no alternative between the universal exclusion of all mankind 
from your threshold, and the most rigorous punishment of him 
who is admitted and betrays. This defendant has been so 
trusted, has so betrayed, and you ought to make him a most 
signal example. 

Gentlemen, I am the more disposed to feel the strongest in- 
dignation and abhorrence at this odious conduct of the defendant, 
when I consider the deplorable condition to which he has redu- 
ced the plaintiff, and perhaps the still more deplorable one that 
he has in prospect before him. What a progress has he to travel 
through, before he can attain the peace and tranquillity which 
he has lost ? How like the wounds of the body are those of the 
mind ! how burning the fever ! how painful the suppuration ! 
how slow, how hesitating, how relapsing the process to con- 
valescence ? Through what a variety of suffering, what new 
scenes and changes, must my unhappy client pass, ere he can re- 
attain, should he ever re-attain, that health of soul of which he 
has been despoiled by the cold and deliberate machinations of 
this practised and gilded seducer ? If, instead of drawing upon his 
incalculable wealth for a scanty retribution, you were to stop 
the progress of his despicable achievements by reducing him to 
actual poverty, you could not even so punish him beyond the 
scope of his offence, nor reprise the plaintiff beyond the measure 
of his suffering. Let me remind you, that in this action, the 
law not only empowers you, but that its policy commands you, 
to consider the public example, as well as the individual injury, 
when you adjust the amount of your verdict. I confess I am 
most anxious that you should acquit yourselves worthily upon 
this important occasion. I am addressing you as fathers, hus- 
bands, brothers. I am anxious that a feeling of those high re- 
lations should enter into, and give dignity to your verdict. But 
I confess, I feel a tenfold solicitude wdien I remember that I am 
addressing you as my countrymen, as Irishmen, whose characters 
as jurors, as gentlemen, must find either honour or degradation 
in the result of your decision. Small as must be the distributive 



THE REV. CHARLES MASSY. 255 

share of that national estimation, that can belong to so unim- 
portant an individual as myself, yet I do own I am tremblingly 
solicitous for his fate. Perhaps it appears of more value to me, 
because it is embarked on the same bottom with yours ; perhaps 
the community of peril, of common safety, or common wreck, 
gives a consequence to my share of the risque, which I could not 
be vain enough to give it, if it were not raised to it by that mu- 
tuality. But why stoop to think at all of myself, when I know 
that you, gentlemen of the jury, when I know that our country 
itself are my clients on this day, and must abide the alternative 
of honour, or of infamy, as you shall decide. But I will not de- 
spond, I will not dare to despond. I have every trust, and hope, 
and confidence in you. And to that hope I will add my most 
fervent prayer to the God of all truth and justice, that you may 
so decide, as to preserve to yourselves while you live, the most 
delightful of all recollections, that of acting justly, and to trans- 
mit to your children the most precious of all inheritances, the 
memory of your virtue. 



31 



SPEECH OF MR. CURRAN, 

IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING AGAINST THE 
HON. MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON, 

In the Court of Exchequer, Dublin, February 4th, 1805. 



An act of Parliament was passed in England in the year 1804, which received the 
royal assent on the 20th July that year, which was entitled, to be an act to render 
more easy the apprehending and bringing to trial, offenders escaping from one part 
of the united kingdom to the other, and also from one country to another. 

The fourth section of which is as follows, on the construction of which section the 
argument in the court of exchequer arose : 

And, for remedy of the like inconveniency by the escape into Ireland of per- 
sons guilty of crimes in England or Scotland respectively, be it further enacted, that, 
from and after the 1st day oi August, 1804, if any person or persons, against whom a 
warrant shall be issued by any of the judges of his majesty's court of king's bench, or 
of the courts of great sessions in Wales, or any justice of oyer and terminer or goal 
delivery, or any justice or justices of the peace of any county, stewartry, riding, 
division, city, liberty, town, or place, within England or Scotland respectively, or 
other persons having authority to issue the same within England or Scotland re- 
spectively, for any crime or offence against the laws of England or Scotland re- 
spectively, shall escape, go into, reside, or be in any place of that part of the united 
kingdom called Ireland, it shall and may be lawful for any justice of the peace of the 
county or place in Ireland, whither or where such person or persons shall escape, go 
into, or reside, or be, to indorse his name on such warrant, which warrant so indorsed 
shall be a sufficient authority to the person or persons bringing such warrant, and to all 
persons to whom such warrant was originally directed, and also to all sheriff's officers 
constables, and other peace officers, of the county or place in Ireland where such 
warrant shall be so indorsed, to execute the said warrant in the county or place in 
Ireland where it is so indorsed, by apprehending the person or persons against 
whom such warrant may be granted, and to convey him, her, or them by the most 
direct way, into England or Scotland respectively, and before one of the justices of 
peace of the county or stewartry, in England or Scotland respectively, Uving near 
the place and in the county where he, she, or they shall arrive and land, which jus- 
tice of peace is hereby authorized and required to proceed with regard to such person 
or persons as if such person or persons had been legally apprehended in the said 
county or stewartry of England or Scotland respectively. 



My Lords, — It has fallen to my lot, either fortunately, or un- 
fortunately, as the event may be, to rise as counsel for my client 

256 



THE KING vs. JOHNSON. 257 

on this most important and momentous occasion. I appear be- 
fore you, my lords, in consequence of a writ issued by his majesty, 
commanding that cause be shown to this his court, why his subject 
has been depi-ived of his lihertij ,- and upon the cause shown in 
obedience to this writ, it is my duty to address you on the most 
awful question, if awfulness is to be judged by consequences and 
events, on which you have been ever called upon to decide. Sorry 
am I that the task has not been confided to more adequate pow- 
ers ; but feeble as they are, they will at least not shrink from it. 
I move you therefore that BIr. Justice Johnston be released from 
illegal imprisonment. 

I cannot but observe the sort of scenic preparation with which 
this sad drama is sought to be brought forward. In part I ap- 
prove it ; in part it excites my disgust and indignation. I am 
glad to find that the attorney and solicitor general, the natural 
and official prosecutors for the state, do not appear ; and I infer 
from their absence, that his excellency the lord lieutenant dis- 
claims any personal concern in this execrable transaction. I 
think it does him much honour; it is a conduct that equally 
agrees with the dignity of his character and the feelings of his 
heart. To his private virtues, whenever he is left to their in- 
fluence, T willingly concur in giving the most unqualified tribute 
of respect. And I do firmly believe, it is with no small regret 
that he suffers his name to be even formally made use of, in 
avowing for a return of one of the judges of the land, with as 
much indifference and nonchalance as if he were a beast of the 
plough. I observe too, the dead silence into which the public is 
frowned by authority for the sad occasion. No man dares to 
mutter ; no newspaper dares to whisper that such a question is 
afloat. It seems an inquiry among the tombs, or rather in the 
shades beyond them. 

Ibant sola sub nocte per umbram. 
I am glad it is so — I am glad of this factitious dumbness ; for if 
murmurs dared to become audible, my voice would be too feeble 
to drown them ; but when all is hushed — when nature sleeps— 

Cum quies mortalibus legris, 

the weakest voice is heard — the shepherd's whistle shoots across 
the listening darkness of the interminable heath, and gives notice 
that the wolf is upon his walk ; and the same gloom and stillness 
2k 



258 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

that tempt the monster to come abroad, faciUtate the communi- 
cation of the warning to beware. Yes, through that silence 
the voice shall be heard ; yes, through that silence the shep- 
herd shall be put upon his guard; yes, through that silence 
shall the felon savage be chased into the toil. Yes, my lords, I 
feel myself cheered and impressed by the composed and dignified 
attention with which I see you are disposed to hear me on the 
most important question that has ever been subjected to your 
consideration ; the most important to the dearest rights of the 
human being ; the most deeply interesting and animating that 
can beat in his heart, or burn upon his tongue — O ! how recreat- 
ing is it to feel that occasions may arise in which the soul of man 
may resume her pretensions ; in which she hears the voice of na- 
ture whisper to her, os homi7ii sublime dedi ccsltimque tueri; in 
which even I can look vp with calm security to the court, and 
down with the most profound contempt upon the reptile I mean 
to tread upon ! I say, reptile ; because, when the proudest man 
in society becomes so the dupe of his childish malice, as to wish 
to inflict on the object of his vengeance the poison of his sting, to 
do a reptile's work he must shrink into a reptile's dimension ; 
and so shrunk, the only way to assail him is to tread upon him. 
But to the subject : — this writ of habeas corpus has had a return. 
That return states, that lord Ellenborough, chief justice of Eng- 
land, issued a warrant reciting the foundation of this dismal trans- 
action : that one of the clerks of the crown-oflice had certified to 
him, that an indictment had been found at Westminster, charg- 
ing the hon. Robert Johnson, late of Westminster, one of the jus- 
tices of his majesty's court of common pleas in Ireland, with the 
publication of certain slanderous libels against the government 
of that country; against the person of his excellency lord Hard- 
wicke, lord lieutenant of that country ; against the person of lord 
Redesdale, the chancellor of Ireland ; and against the person of 
Mr. Justice Osborne, one of the justices of the court of king's 
bench in Ireland. One of the clerks of the crown-oflice, it seems, 
certified all this to his lordship. How many of those there are, 
or who they are, or which of them so certified, we cannot pre- 
sume to guess, because the learned and noble lord is silent as to 
those circumstances. We are only informed that one of them 
made that important communication to his lordship. It puts me 
in mind of the information given to one of Fielding's justices : 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 259 

*« did not," says his worship's wife, " the man with the valet make 
his Jidavy that you was avagram .*" I suppose it was some such 
petty bag officer who gave lord Ellenborough to understand that 
Mr. Justice Johnson was indicted. And being thus given to un- 
derstand and be informed, he issued his warrant to a gentleman, 
no doubt of great respectability, a Mr. Williams, his tipstatF, to 
take the body of Mr. Justice Johnson and bring him before a 
magistrate, for the purpose of giving bail to appear within the 
first eight days of this term, so that there might be a trial within 
the sittings after ; and if, by the blessing of God, he should be 
convicted, then to appear on the return of the jjostea, to be dealt 
with according to law. 

Perhaps it may be a question for you to decide, whether that 
warrant, such as it may be, is not now absolutely spent ; and, if 
not, how a man can contrive to be hereafter in England on a day 
that is past ? And high as the opinion may be in England of 
Irish understanding, it will be something beyond even Irish ex- 
actness to bind him to appear in England, not a fortnight hence, 
but a fortnight ago. — I wish, my lords, we had the art of giving 
time this retrogade motion. If possessed of the secret, we might 
be disposed to improve it from fortnights into years. 

There is something not incurious in the juxta-position of signa- 
tures. The warrant is signed by the chief justice of all England. 
In music, the ear is reconciled to strong transitions of key by a 
preparatory resolution of the intervening discords ; but here, alas ! 
there is nothing to break the fall : the august title of Ellenbo- 
rough is followed by the unadorned name of brother Bell, the 
sponsor of his lordship's warrant. Let me not, however, be suf- 
fered to deem lightly of the compeer of the noble and learned 
lord. Mr. Justice Bell ought to be a lawyer ; I remember him 
myself long a crier,* and I know his credit too with the state ; he 
has had a noli prosequi. I see not therefore why it may not fairly 
be said "fortunati ambo.'" It appears by his return, that Mr. 
Justice Bell indorses this bill of lading to another consignee, Mr. 
Medlicot, a most respectable gentleman ; he describes himself 
upon the warrant, and he gives a delightful specimen of the ad- 
ministration of justice, and the calender of saints in office ; he 
describes himself a justice and a peace officer — that is, a magis- 

* This gentleman was formerly crier to the late baron Hamilton, when the baron 
went circuit as a judge. 



260 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE laNG 

trate and a catchpole : — so that he may receive informations as a 
justice ; if he can write, he may draw them as a clerk ; if not, he 
can execute the warrant as bailiff; and, if it be a capital offence, 
you may see the culprit, the justice, the clerk, the bailiff, and 
the hangman, together in the same cart ; and, though he may 
not write, he may " ride and tie !" What a pity that their jour- 
ney should not be further continued together ! That, as they 
had been " lovely in their Uves, so in their deaths they might not 
be divided !" I find, my lords, I have undesignedly raised a laugh ; 
never did I less feel merriment. — Let not me be condemned — let 
not the laugh be mistaken. — Never was Mr. Hume more just 
than when he says, that " in many things the extremes are nearer 
to one another than the means." — Few are those events that are 
produced by vice and folly, that fire the heart with indignation, 
that do not also shake the sides with laughter. So when the two 
famous moralists of old beheld the sad spectacle of life, the one 
burst into laughter, the other melted into tears : they were each 
of them right, and equally right. 

Si credas utrique 
Res sunt humanao flebile ludibrium. 

But these laughs are the bitter ireful laughs of honest indignation, 
or they are the laughs of hectic melancholy and despair. 

It is stated to you, my lords, that these two justices, if justices 
they are to be called, went to the house of the defendant. I am 
speaking to judges, but I disdain the paltry insult it would be to 
them, were I to appeal to any wretched sympathy of situation. 
I feel I am above it. I know the bench is above it. But I know, 
too, that there are ranks, and degrees, and decorums to be ob- 
served ; and, if I had a harsh communication to make to a ven- 
erable judge, and a similar one to his crier, I should certainly ad- 
dress them in a very different language indeed. A judge of the 
land, a man not young, of infirm health, has the sanctuary of his 
habitation broken open by these two persons, who set out with 
him for the coast, to drag him from his country, to hurry him to 
a strange land by the " most direct way !" till the king's writ 
stopped the malefactors, and left the subject of the king a waif 
dropped in the pursuit. 

Is it for nothing, my lords, I say this ? Is it without intention 
I state the facts in this way ? It is with every intention. It is 
the duty of the public advocate not so to put forward the object 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 261 

of public attention, as that the skeleton only shall appear, without 
flesh, or feature, or complexion. I mean every thing that ought 
to be meant in a court of justice. I mean not only that this exe- 
crable attempt shall be intelligible to the court as a matter of 
lazv, but shall be understood by the world as an act of state. If 
advocates had always the honesty and the courage, upon occa- 
sions like this, to despise all personal considerations, and to think 
of no consequence but what may result to the public from the 
faithful discharge of their sacred trust, these phrenetic projects of 
power, these atrocious aggressions on the liberty and happiness 
of men, would not be so often attempted : for, though a certain 
class of delinquents may be screened from punishment, they can- 
not be protected from hatred and derision. The great tribunal 
of reputation will pass its inexorable sentence upon their crimes, 
their follies, or their incompetency ; they will sink themselves 
under the consciousness of their situation ; they will feel the 
operation of an acid so neutralizing the malignity of their 
natures, as to make them at least harmless, if it cannot make 
them honest. Nor is there any thing of risk in the conduct I recom- 
mend. If the fire be hot, or the window cold, turn your back to 
either ; turn your face. So, if you are obliged to arraign the 
acts of those in high station, approach them not in malice, nor 
favour, nor fear. Remember, that it is the condition of guilt to 
tremble, and of honesty to be bold ; remember, that your false 
fear can only give them false courage ; that while you noblj'- avow 
the cause of truth, you will find her shield an impenetrable pro- 
tection ; and that no attack can be either hazardous or inefiicient, 
if it be just and resolute. — If Nathan had not fortified himself in 
the boldness and directness of his charge, he might have been 
hanged for the malice of his parable. 

It is, my lords, in this temper of mind, befitting every advocate 
who is worthy of the name, deeply and modestly sensible of his 
duty, and proud of his privilege, equally exalted above the mean- 
ness of temporizing or of offending, most averse from the unneces- 
sary infliction of pain upon any man or men whatsoever, that 
I now address you on a question, the most vitally connected with 
the liberty and well being of every man within the limits of the 
British empire ; which, if decided one way, he may be a freeman ; 
which, if decided the other, he must be a slave. It is not the 
Irish nation only that is involved in this question : every member 



262 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

of the three realms is equally embarked ; and would to God all 
England could listen to what passes here this day ! they would 
regard us with more sympathy and respect, when the proudest 
Briton saw that his liberty was defended in what he would call a 
provincial court, and by a provincial advocate. The abstract 
and general question for your consideration is this : — my lord El- 
lenborough has signed with his own hand a warrant, which has 
been endorsed by Mr. Bell, an Irish justice, for seizing the person 
of Mr. Justice Johnson in Ireland, for conveying his person by the 
most direct way, in such manner as these bailiffs may choose, 
across the sea, and afterwards to the city of Westminister, to take 
his trial for an alleged libel against the persons entrusted with 
the government of Ireland, and to take that trial in a country 
where the supposed offender did not live at the time of the sup- 
posed offence, nor since a period of at least eighteen months pre- 
vious thereto, has ever resided ; where the subject of his accu- 
sation is perfectly unknown ; where the conduct of his prosecu- 
tors, which has been the subject of the supposed libel, is equally 
unknown ; where he has not the power of compelling the attend- 
ance of a single witness for his defence. Under that warrant he 
has been dragged from his family ; under that warrant he was 
on his way to the water's edge : his transportation has been in- 
terrupted by the writ before you, and upon the return of that 
writ arises the question upon which you are to decide, the legality 
or illegality of so transporting him for the purpose of trial. I am 
well aware, my lords, of the limits of the present discussion ; if 
the law was. clear in favour of the prosecutors, a most momentous 
question might arise — how far they may be delinquents in daring 
to avail themselves of such a law for such a purpose ? — but I am 
aware that such is not the present question. 1 am aware that 
this is no court of impeachment ; and therefore that your inquiry 
is, not whether such a power hath been criminally used, but 
whether it doth in fact exist. The arrest of the defendant has 
been justified by the advocates of the crown under the forty- 
fourth of his present majesty. I have had the curiosity to in- 
quire into the history of that act, and I find, that in the month 
of May, 1804, the brother-in-law of one of the present prosecu- 
tors obtained leave to bring in a bill to " render more easy the 
apprehending and bringing to trial offenders escaping from one 
part of the united kingdom to another, and also from one county 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 263 

to another :" that bill was brought in : it travelled in the caravan 
of legislation unheeded and unnoticed, retarded by no difficulties 
of discussion or debate, and in due fulness of season it passed into 
a law, which was to commence from and after the tirst of August, 
1804. This act, like a young Hercules, began its exploits in the 
cradle. In the November following, the present warrant was 
issued, under its supposed authority. Let me not be understood 
to say, that the act has been slided through an unsuspecting legis- 
lature, under any particular influence, or for any particular pur- 
pose : that any such man could be found, or any such influence 
exist, or any such lethargy prevail, would not, perhaps, be de- 
cent to suppose ; still less do I question the legislative authority 
of parliament. We all know that a parliament may attaint it- 
self; and that its omnipotence may equally extend in the same 
way to the whole body of the people. We know also that most 
unjust and cruel acts of attainder have been obtained by corrupt 
men in bad times ; and if I could bring myself to say, which I do 
not, that this act was contrived for the mere purpose of destroy- 
ing an obnoxious individual, I should not hesitate to call it the 
most odious species of attainder that could be found upon the 
records of legislative degradation ; because, for the simple pur- 
pose of extinguishing an individual, it would sweep the liberty of 
every being in the state, into the vortex of general and undistin- 
guishing destruction. But these are points of view upon which 
the minds of the people of Ireland and England may dwell with 
terror or indignation, or apathy, according as they may be fitted 
for liberty or for chains ; but they are not points for the court ; 
and so I pass them by. The present arrest and detention are 
defended under the forty-fourth of the king : are they warranted 
by that act ? That is the only question for you to decide ; and 
you will arrive at that decision in the usual course, by inquiring, 
first, how the law stood before upon the subject ; next, what the 
imperfection or grievance of that law was ; and thirdly what the 
remedy intended to be applied by the act in question ? 

First, then, how stood the law before? — upon this part it 
would be a parade of useless learning to go farther back than 
the statute of Charles, the Habeas Corpus act, which is so justly 
called the second magna charta of British liberty : what was the 
occasion of the law ? the arbitrary transportation of the subject 
beyond the realm ; that base and malignant war, which the 
3K 



264 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

odious and despicable minions of power are for ever ready to 
wage against all those who are honest and bold enough to despise, 
to expose, and to resist them. Such is the oscitancy of man, that 
he lies torpid for ages under these agressions, until at last some 
signal abuse, the violation of Lucrece, the death of Virginia, the 
oppression of William Tell, shake him from his slumber. For 
years had those drunken gambols of power been played in Eng- 
land ; for years had the waters of bitterness been rising to the 
brim; at last a single drop caused them to sleep — and what 
does that great statute do ? It defines and asserts the right, it 
points out the abuse ; and it endeavours to secure the right, and 
to guard against the abuse, by giving redress to the sufferer, and 
by punishing the offender : for years had it been the practice to 
transport obnoxious persons out of the realm into distant parts 
under the pretext of punishment, or of safe custody. Well might 
they have been said to be sent " to that undiscovered country 
from whose bourne no traveller returns," for of these wretched 
travellers how few ever did return 1 • But of that flagrant abuse 
this statute has laid the axe to the root : it prohibits the abuse ; 
it declares such detention or removal illegal ; it gives an action 
against all persons concerned in the offence, by contriving, writ- 
ing, signing, counter-signing, such warrant, or advising or assist- 
ing therein. That you may form a just estimate of the rights 
which were to be secured, examine the means by which their 
infringement was in future to be prevented and punished. The 
injured party has a civil action against the offenders ; but the 
legislature recollected, that the sneaking unprincipled humility 
of a servile packed jury might do homage to ministerial power 
by compensating the individual with nominal damages. The 
statute does that, of which I remember no other instance. It 
leaves the jury at liberty to give damages to any extent, aboA-e 
five hundred pounds, but expressly forbids them to find a verdict 
of damages below it. Was this sufiicient ? — No — The offenders 
incur a praemunire. They are put out of the king's protection ; 
they forfeit their lands and goods ; they are disabled from bearing 
any office of trust or profit. — Did the statute stop there ? The 
legislature saw in their prospective wisdom, that the profligate 
favourite, who had committed treason against the king by the 
oppression of his subjects, might acquire such a dominion over the 
mind of his master, as by the exertion of prerogative to interrupt 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 265 

the course of justice, and prevent the punishment of his crime. — 
The king cannot pardon. — Are bulwarks like these ever con- 
structed to repel the incursions of a contemptible enemy ? Was 
it a trivial and ordinary occasion which raised this storm of in- 
dignation in the parliament of that day ? Is the ocean ever 
lashed by the tempest to waft a feather or to drown a fly ? Thus, 
haughtily and jealously, does this statute restrain the abuses that 
may be committed against the liberty of the subject by the judge, 
the jury, or the minister. One exception, and one exception 
only does it contain : — It excepts from its protection, by the six- 
teenth section, persons who may have committed any " capital 
offence" in Scotland or Ireland. If the principle of that excep- 
tion were now open to discussion, sure I am, that much might be 
said against its policy. On the one side, you would have to con- 
sider the mischief of letting this statute protect a capital offender 
from punishment, by prohibiting his transmission to that jurisdic- 
tion where his crime v^^as committed, and where alone he could 
be tried. On the other, you would have to weigh the danger to 
be feared from the abuse of such a power, which, as the habeas 
corpus act stood, could not be resorted to in any ordinary way ; 
but was confined to the sole and exclusive exercise of the ad- 
visers of the prerogative. You would have to consider whether 
it was more likely that it would be used against the guilty or the 
obnoxious ; whether it was more likely to be used as an instru- 
ment of justice against the bad, or a pretext of oppression against 
the good ; and finally, whether you might not apply to the sub- 
ject the humane maxim of our law — that better it is that one 
hundred guilty men should escape, than that one innocent, and, 
let me add, meritorious man should suffer. But our ancestors 
have considered the question ; they have decided ; and, until we 
are better satisfied than I fear we can be, that we have not de- 
generated from their virtue, it can scarcely become us to pass 
any light or hasty condemnation upon their wisdom. In this 
great statute then, my lords, you have the line of demarcation 
between the prerogative and the people, as well as between the 
criminal law and the subject, defined with all the exactness, and 
guarded by every precaution that human prudence could devise. 
Wretched must that legislature be, whose acts you cannot trace 
to the first unchangeable principles of rational prerogative, of 
civil liberty, of equal justice ! In this act you trace them all dis- 
21 



266 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

tinctly. By this act you have a solemn legislative declaration, 
" that it is incompatihle with liberty to send any subject out of 
the realm, under pretence of any crime supposed or alleged to be 
committed in a foreign jurisdiction, except that crime be capital." 
Such were the bulwarks which our ancestors drew about the 
sacred temple of liberty — such the ramparts by which they 
sought to bar out the ever-toiling ocean of arbitrary power; and 
thought, (generous credulity !) that they had barred it out from 
their posterity for ever. Little did they foresee the future race 
of vermin that would work their way through those mounds, and 
let back the inundation ; little did they foresee that their labours 
were so like those frail and transient works that threatened for 
a while the haughty crimes and battlements of Troy, but so soon 
vanished before the force of the trident and the impulse of the 
waters ; or that they were still more like the forms which the 
infant's finger traces upon the beach ; the next breeze, the next 
tide erases them, and confounds them with the barren undistin- 
guished strand. The ill-omened bird that lights upon it sees 
nothing to mark, to allure, or to deter, but finds all one obliterated 
unvaried waste ; 

Et sola secum sicca spatiatur arena. 
Still do I hope that this sacred bequest of our ancestors will have 
a more prosperous fortune, and be preserved by a more religious 
and successful care, a polar star to the wisdom of the legislator, 
and the integrity of the judge. 

As such will 1 suppose its principle not yet brought into dis- 
grace ; and as such, with your permission, will I still presume to 
argue upon that principle. 

So stood the law till the two acts of the twenty-third and 
twenty-fourth of George II. which relate wholly to cases between 
county and county in England. Next followed the act of the 
thirteenth of his present majesty, which was merely a regulation 
between England and Scotland. And next came the act of the 
forty-fourth of the present reign, upon which you are now called 
on to decide, which, as between county and county, is an incorpo- 
ration of the two acts of George II : and as between England, 
Scotland, and Ireland, is nearly a transcript of the thirteenth of 
the king. 

Under the third and fourth section of this last act the learned 
counsel for the learned prosecutors (for really I think it only can- 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 267 

did to acquit the lord lieutenant of the folly or the shame of this 
business ; and to suppose that he is as innocent of the project 
from his temper, as he must from his education be ignorant of 
the subject) endeavour to justify this proceeding. The con- 
struction of this act they broadly and expressly contend to be 
this : — first, they assert that it extends not only to the higher 
crimes, but to all offences whatsoever : secondly, that it extends 
not only to persons who may have committed offences within any 
given jurisdictions, and afterwards escaped or gone out of such 
jurisdictions, but to all persons whether so escaping or going out or 
not : — thirdly, that it extends to constructive offences, that is, to 
offences committed against the laws of certain jurisdictions, com- 
mitted in places not within them, by persons that never put their 
feet within them, but by construction of law committing them 
within such jurisdiction, and of course triable therein : — fourthly, 
that it extends pecuUarly to the case of libels against the per- 
sons entrusted with the powers of government, or with offices in 
the state : — and fifthly, that it extends not only to offences com- 
mitted after the commencement of the act, but also to offences at 
any period, however remotely previous to the existence of the 
statute ; that is, that it is to have an ex post facto operation. The 
learned prosecutors have been forced into the necessity of sup- 
porting these last monstrous positions, because, upon the return 
to the writ, and upon the affidavits, it appears, and has been ex- 
pressly admitted in the argument — first, that the supposed libel 
upon these noble and learned prosecutors relates to the unhappy 
circumstances that took place in Ireland on the twenty-third of 
July, 1803, and of course must have been published subsequent 
thereto : — and secondly, that Mr. Justice Johnson from the be- 
ginning of 1802 to the present hour was never for a moment m 
England, but was constantly resident in Ireland ; so that his guilt, 
whatever it may be, must arise from some act, of necessity com- 
mitted in Ireland, and by no physical possibility committed or ca- 
pable of being committed in England : these are the positions 
upon which a learned chancellor and a learned judge come for- 
ward to support their cause and to stake their character, each 
in the face of his country, and both in the face of the British em- 
pire : these are the positions, which, thank God, it belongs to my 
nature to abhor, and to my education to despise, and which it is 
this day my most prompt and melancholy duty to refute and to 



268 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

resist — most prompt in obeying ; most grieved at the occasion 
that calls for such obedience. 

We must now examine this act of the forty-fourth of the king ; 
and in doing so, I trust you will seek some nobler assistance than 
can be found in the principles or the piactice of day-rules or side- 
bar motions ; something more worthy a liberal and learned court, 
acting under a religious sense of their duty to their king, their 
country, and their God, than the feeble and pedantic aid of a 
stunted verbal interpretation, straining upon its tiptoe to peep 
over the syllable that stands between it and meaning. If your 
object was merely to see if its words could be tortured into a sub- 
mission to a vindicate interpretation, you would have only to in- 
dorse the construction that these learned prosecutors have put 
upon it, and that with as much grave deliberation as Mr. Jus- 
tice Bell has vouchsafed to indorse the warrant which my lord 
Ellenborough has thought fit to issue under its authority. You 
would then have only to look at it, ut legiileius quidam cautus 
atque acutus, prsecenlor. 

Lord Avonmore. — No, Mr. Curran, you forget ; it is not prae- 
cenlor, it is leguleius quidam co.utus atque acutus, prseco actionum, 
cantor formariim, auceps syllabariim. 

Mr. Curran. — I thank you, my lord, for the assistance : and 1 
am the more grateful, because, when I consider the laudable 
and successful efforts that have been made of late to make sci- 
ence domestic and familiar, and to emancipate her from the 
trammels of scholarship, as well as the just suspicion under which 
the harbourers and abettors of those outlawed classics have fallen, 
I see at what a risk you have ventured to help me out. And 
yet see, my lord, if you are prudent in trusting yourself to the 
honour of an accomplice. Think, should I be prosecuted for this 
misprision of learning, if I could resist the temptation of escaping 
by turning evidence against so notorious a delinquent as you, my 
good lord, and so confessedly more criminal than myself, or per- 
haps than any other man in the empire.* 

To examine this act then, my lords, we must revert to the 
three English statutes of which it is a transcript. The first of 
these is the twenty-third of George II. cap. 26, sect. 11. 

So much of the title as relates to our present inquiry is " for 

♦ Lord Avonmore may be justly ranked among the first classical scholars in either 
Ireland or England. They who know him, know this. 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 269 

the apprehending of persons in any county or place upon war- 
rants granted by justices of the peace in any other county or 
place." 

See now section IL, that contains the preamble and enaction 
as to this subject : — 

"And whereas it frequently happens that persons, against 
whom warrants are granted by justices of the peace for the 
several counties within this kingdom, escape into other counties 
or places out of the jurisdiction of the justices of the peace grant- 
ing such warrants, and thereby avoid being punished for the of- 
fences wherewith they are charged : For remedy whereof, be 
it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that from and after the 
twenty-fourth day of June, one thousand seven hundred and fifty, 
in case any person against whom a legal warrant shall be issued 
by any justice or justices of the peace for any county, riding, 
division, city, hberty, town, or place within this kingdom, shall 
escape or go into any other county, riding, division, city, hberty, 
town, or place out of the jurisdiction of the justice or justices 
granting such warrant as aforesaid, it shall and may be lawful 
for any justice of the peace of the county, riding, division, city, 
liberty, town, or place, to which such person shall have gone or 
escaped, to endorse such warrant, upon application made to him 
for that purpose, and to cause the person against whom the same 
shall have been issued, to be apprehended and sent to the justice 
or justices who granted such warrant, or to some other justice or 
justices of the county, riding, division, city, liberty, town, or place, 
from whence such person shall have gone or escaped, to the end 
that he or she may be dealt with according to law, any law or 
usage to the contrary notwithstanding." 

This act was amended by the twenty -fourth of the same reign, 
the title of which was, " An act for amending and making more 
effectual a clause in an act passed in the last session of parlia- 
ment for the apprehending of persons in any county or place 
upon warrants granted by justices of the peace of any county or 
place." 

It then recites the 11th section of the twenty-third of George 
IL, and proceeds, " And whereas, such offender or offenders may 
reside or be in some other county, riding, division, city, liberty, 
town, or place, out of the jurisdictions of the justice or justices 
granting such warrant as aforesaid, before the granting such 



270 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

warrant, and without escaping or going out of the county, ri- 
ding, division, city, Hberty, town, or place, after such warrant 
granted." 

1 shall reserve a more particular examination of these two acts 
for that head of my argument that shall necessarily require it. 
At present I shall only observe : first, that they are manifestly 
prospective ; secondly, that they operate only as between county 
and county, in England ; thirdly, that they clearly and distinctly 
go to all offenders whatsoever, who may avoid trial and punish- 
ment of their offences by escaping from the jurisdiction in which 
they were committed, and were of course triable and punisha- 
ble ; and fourthly, that provision is made for bailing the persons 
so arrested in the place where taken, if the offences charged 
upon them were bailable by law. 

In the thirteenth of his present majesty, it was thought fit to 
make a law with respect to criminals escaping from England to 
Scotland, and vice versa : of that act the present statute of the 
forty-fourth is a transcript. And upon this statute arises the first 
question made by the prosecutors; namely, whether, like the 
acts of the twenty-third and twenty-fourth of George II. which 
were merely between county and county, it extended indiscrimi- 
nately to the lowest as well as the highest offences ? or whether 
the thirteenth and forty-fourth, which go to kingdom and king- 
dom, are not confined to some and to what particular species of 
offences? The preamble to these two statutes, so far as they 
bear upon our present question, is contained in the 3d section of 
the forty-fourth, the act now under consideration. And there is 
not a word in it that is not most material. It says, " Whereas, it 
may frequently happen that felons and other malefactors in Ire- 
land may make their escape into Great Britain, and also, that 
felons and other malefactors in Great Britain may make their 
escape into Ireland, whereby their crimes remain unpunished." 
There being no suflicient provision by the laws now in force in 
Great Britain and Ireland, respectively, for apprehending such 
offenders and transmitting them into that part of the united king- 
dom in which their offences were committed. For remedy 
whereof, &c. and if any person against whom a warrant shall be 
issued by any justice of the peace in Ireland, for any crime or 
offence against the laws of Ireland, shall escape, go into, reside, 
or be in any place in England or Scotland, it shall be lawful for 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 271 

any justice of the peace for the place, whither or where such 
persons shall escape, &c. to endorse his name on such warrant ; 
which warrant so endorsed shall be a sufficient authority to the 
person bringing it to execute the same, by apprehending the per- 
son against whom it is granted, and to convey him by the most 
direct way into Ireland, and before a justice living near the 
place w^here he shall land, which justice shall proceed with re- 
gard to him as if he had been legally apprehended in such coun- 
ty of Ireland. The 4th section makes the same provision for 
escapes from England or Scotland into Ireland. The statute 
goes on and directs that the expenses of such removal shall be 
repaid to the person defraying the same, by the treasurer of the 
county in which the crime was committed, and the treasurer is 
to be allowed for it in his accounts. 

To support the construction that takes in all possible otTences 
of all possible degrees, you have been told, and upon the grave 
authority of notable cases, that the enacting part of a statute 
may go beyond its preamble ; that it cannot be restrained by the 
preamble, and still less by the title ; that here the enacting clause 
was the words " any offence," and that " any offence" must ex- 
tend to every offence, and of course to the offence in question. 
If the question had been of a lighter kind, you might perhaps 
have smiled at the parade of authorities produced to establish 
what no lawyer ever thinks of denying. They would have acted 
with more advantage to the justice of the country, though per- 
haps not to the wishes of their clients, if they had reminded your 
lordships, that, in the construction of statutes, the preamble, and 
even the title itself, may give some assistance to the judge in de- 
veloping its meaning and its extent ; if they had reminded you, 
that remedial laws are to be construed liberally, and penal laws 
vi^ith the utmost strictness and caution. And when they contend 
that a supposed libel is within the letter of this law, they would 
have done well to have added, that it is a maxim that there may 
be cases within the letter of a statute, which, notwithstanding, 
the judge is bound to reject, from its operation being incom- 
patible with its spirit. They would have done well in adding, 
that the judge is bound so to construe all laws as not infringe 
upon any of the known rules of religion or morality — any of the 
known rules of distributive justice — any of the established princi- 
ples of the liberties and rights of the subject — and that it is no more 
3L 



272 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

than a decent and becoming deference to the legislator to assume 
as certain, that whatever words he may have used, he could not 
possibly have meant any thing that upon the face of it was pal- 
pably absurd, immoral, or unjust. These are the principles on 
which I am persuaded this court will always act, because I know 
them to be the principles on which every court of justice ought 
to act. And I abstain studiously from appeahng to any judicial 
decisions in support of them, because to fortify them by precedent 
or authority, would be to suppose them liable to be called in 
question. There is another rule which I can easily excuse the 
learned gentlemen from adverting to, and that is, that when many 
statutes are made in pari materia, any one of them is to be con- 
strued, not independently of the others, but with a reference to 
the entire code of which it is only a component part. 

On these grounds then, I say, the forty-fourth was not, and 
could not be intended to go to all offences whatsoever. 

First, because the acts of twenty-third and twenty-fourth of 
George II. had already prescribed " all persons" by words of the 
most general and comprehensive kind. If the framers of the 
thirteenth and forty-fourth meant to carry these acts to the same 
length, they had the words of the former acts before their eyes, 
and yet they have used very different words : a clear proof, in 
my mind, that they meant to convey a very different meaning. 
In these latter acts they use very singular words — " felons and 
other malefactors ; — that these words are somewhat loose and 
indefinite I make no difficulty of admitting : but will any man 
that understands English deny, that they describe offences of an 
higher and more enormous degree ? You are told, that felon 
does not necessarily mean a capital offender, because there are 
felonies not capital, the name being derived from the forfeiture 
not of life, but of property. You are also told, that malefactor 
means generally an ill-doer, and, in that sense, that every offen- 
der is a malefactor ; but the thirteenth and forty-fourth states 
this class to be felons and malefactors, for whose transmission from 
kingdom to kingdom " no sufficient provision w^as made by the 
laws now in force." Now I think it is not unfair reasoning to 
say, that this act extends to a class of offenders whose transmis- 
sion was admitted to be not incompatible with the just liberty of 
the subject of England ; but for whose transmission the legislature 
tould not say there was ?w provision ; but for whose transmission 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 273 

it was clear that there was not a sufficient provision, though 
there was some provision. If you can find any class so circum- 
stanced, that is, exclusively liable by law to be so transmitted, 
the meaning of the words " felons and other malefactors," be- 
comes fixed, and must necessarily refer to such class. 

Now that class is expressly described in the habeas corpus act, 
because it declares the transmission of all persons to be illegal, 
except only persons charged with capital crimes ; for their ap- 
prehension and transmission there was a provision, the mandatum 
regis : that is, the discretionary exercise of the prerogative. That 
power had therefore been used in cases of treason, as in Lundy's 
case : so in the case of lord Sanchar ; Carliel, the principal in 
the murder of Turner, committed in London by the procurement 
of lord Sanchar, was arrested in Scotland, whither he had fled, 
by the order of king James I. and brought back to England, 
where he was executed for the crime, as was lord Sanchar, the 
accessory before the fact ; but such interference of the preroga- 
tive might be granted or withheld at pleasure, could be applied 
for only with great difficulty and expense, and therefore might 
well be called an insufficient provision. No provision for such a 
purpose can be sufficient, unless, instead of depending on the ca- 
price of men in power, it can be resorted to in the ordinary course 
of law. You have therefore, my lords, to elect between two 
constructions ; one which makes an adequate provision for car- 
rying the exception in the sixteenth section of the habeas corpus 
act into effect ; and the other, a complete and radical repeal of 
that sacred security for the freedom of Englishmen. — But further, 
the spirit and the letter of the habeas corpus law is, that the 
party interested shall, without a moment's delay, be bailed, if 
the offence be bailable ; but if misdemeanors are within this act, 
then an English subject, arrested under an Irish warrant, cannot 
be bailed within any part of the realm of England, but must be 
carried forward, in the custody of Irish bailiffs, to the sea-shore of 
his country, where he is to be embarked in such vessel as they 
think proper ; and, if it should be the good pleasure of his guar- 
dians to let him land alive in any part of Ireland, then, and not 
till then, may he apply to an Irish justice to admit him to bail in 
a foreign country, where he is a perfect stranger, and where 
none but an idiot could expect to find any man disposed to make 
himself responsible for his appearance. Can you, my lords, bring 
2m 



274 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

your minds easily to believe, that such a tissue of despotism and 
folly could have been the sober and deliberate intention of the 
legislature 1 but further, under the acts of George II. even from 
one county to the next, the warrant by the first justice must be 
authenticated upon oath, before it can be indorsed by the second ; 
but, in this act, between, perhaps, the remotest regions of diiferent 
kingdoms, no authentication is required ; and, upon the indorse- 
ment of, perhaps, a forged warrant, which the English justice 
has no means of inquiring into, a British subject is to be marched 
through England, and carried over sea to Ireland, there to learn 
in the county of Kerry, or Gal way, or Derry, that he had been 
torn from his family, his friends, his business, to the annihilation 
of his credit, the ruin of his affairs, the destruction of his health, 
in consequence of a mistake, or a practical joke, or an inhuman 
or remorseless project of vindictive malice ; and that he is then 
at liberty to return, if he is able ; that he may have a good ac- 
tion at law against the worthy and responsible baihff that abused 
him, if he is foolish enough to look for him, or unfortunate enough 
to find him. Can you, my lords, be brought seriously to believe, 
that such a construction would not be the foulest aspersion upon 
the wisdom and justice of the legislature ? 

I said, my lords, that an Englishman may be taken upon the 
indorsement of a forged warrant. Let me not be supposed such 
a simpleton as to think the danger of forgery makes a shade 
of difference in the subject. I know too well that calendar of 
saints, the Irish justices ; I am too much in the habit of prosecut- 
ing and defending them every term and every commission, not 
to be able to guess at what price a customer might have real 
warrants by the dozen ; and, without much sagacity, we might 
calculate the average expense of their indorsement at the other 
side of the water. — But, further yet, the act provides that the 
expense of such transmission shall be paid at the end of the jour- 
ney, by the place where the crime has been committed — but, 
who is to supply the expenses by the way ? what sort of prose- 
cutors do you think the more likely to advance those expenses, 
an angry minister, or a vindictive individual ? — I can easily see 
that such a construction would give a most effectual method of 
getting rid of a troublesome political opponent; or a rival in 
trade ; or a rival in love ; or of quickening the undutiful linger- 
ing of an ancestor that felt not the maturity of his heir; but I 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 275 

cannot bring myself to believe, that a sober legislature, when the 
common rights of humanity seem to be beaten into their last 
intrenchment,andto make their last stand, I trust in God a suc- 
cessful one, in the British empire, would choose exactly that 
awful crisis for destroying the most vital principles of common 
justice and liberty; or of showing to these nations, that their 
treasure and their blood were to be wasted in struggling for the 
noble privilege of holding the right of freedom, of habitation, and 
of country, at the courtesy of every little irritable officer of state, 
or our worshipful Rivets, and Bells, and Medlicots, and their 
trusty and well-beloved cousins and catchpoles. 

But, my lords, even if the prosecutor should succeed, which, 
for the honour and character of Ireland, I trust he cannot, in 
wringing from the bench an admission that all oifences whatso- 
ever are within this act, he will have only commenced his hon- 
ourable cause : he will only have arrived at the vestibule of 
atrocity. He has now to show that Mr. Johnson is within the 
description of a malefactor, making his escape into Ireland, 
whereby his offence may remain unpunished, and liable to be 
arrested under a warrant indorsed in that place whither or 
where such person shall escape, go into, reside, or be. For this 
inquiry you must refer to the twenty-third and twenty-fourth 
George II. The first of these, twenty-third, c. 11. recites the 
mischief — " that persons against whom warrants are granted 
escape into other counties, and thereby avoid being punished." — 
The enacting part then gives the remedy : — " the justice for the 
place into which such person shall have gone or escaped shall in- 
dorse the original warrant, and the person accused shall thereunder 
be sent to the justice who granted it, to be by him dealt with, &c." 

If words can be plain, these words are so : they extend to per- 
sons actually committing crimes within a jurisdiction, and actually 
escaping into some other after warrant granted, and thereby 
avoiding trial. — In this act there was found two defects : — first, 
it did not comprehend persons changing their abode before war- 
rant issued, and whose removing, as not being a direct flight from 
pursuit, could scarcely be called an escape; — secondly, it did 
not give the second justice a power to bail. — And here you see 
how essentia] to justice it was deemed, that the person arrested 
should be bailed on the spot and the moment of arrest, if the 
charge was bailable. 



276 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

Accordingly, the twenty-fourth of George II. cap. 55. was 
made. — After reciting the former act, and the class of offenders 
thereby described, namely, actual offenders actually escaping, it 
recites that " whereas such offenders may reside or be in some 
other county before the warrant granted, and without escaping 
or going out of the county after such warrant granted," it then 
enacts, " that the justice for such place where such person shall 
escape, go into, reside, or be, shall indorse, &c. and may bail if 
bailable, or transmit, &c. 

Now the construction of these two acts taken together is 
manifestly this : it takes in every person, who, being in any juris- 
diction, and committing an offence therein, escaping after war- 
rant, or without escaping after warrant, going into some other 
jurisdiction, and who shall there reside, that is, permanently abide, 
or shall be, that is permanently, so as to be called a resident. 

Now here it is admitted that Mr. Johnson was not within the 
realm of England since the beginning of 1802, more than a year 
before the offence existed ; and therefore you are gravely called 
upon to say that he is the person who made his escape from a 
place where he never was, and into a place which he had never 
left. — To let in this wise and humane instruction, see what you 
are called upon to do : — the statute makes such persons liable to 
arrest if they shall have done certain things, to wit, if they shall 
escape, go into, reside, or be ; but if the fact of simply being, i. e. 
existing in another jurisdiction, is sufficient to make them so lia- 
ble, it follows of course, that the two only verbs that imply doing 
any thing, that is escape or go into, must be regarded as superflu- 
ous ; that is, that the legislature had no idea whatsoever to be 
conveyed by them when they used them, and therefore are alto- 
gether expunged and rejected. 

Such, my lords, are the strange and unnatural monsters that 
may be produced by the union of malignity and folly. I cannot 
but own that I feel an indignant, and, perhaps, ill-natured satis- 
faction in reflecting, that my own country cannot monopolize the 
derision and detestation that such a production must attract. It 
was originally conceived by the wisdom of the east ; it has made 
its escape, and come into Ireland under the sanction of the first 
criminal judge of the empire; where, I trust in God, we shall 
have only to feel shame or anger at the insolence of the visit, 
without the melancholy aggravation of such an execrable guest 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 277 

continuing to reside or to be among us. On the contrary, I will 
not dismiss the cheering expectation from my heart, that your 
decision, my lords, will show the British nation, that a country, 
having as just and as proud an idea of liberty as herself, is not 
an unworthy ally in the great contest for the rights of humanity; 
is no unworthy associate in resisting the progress of barbarity 
and military despotism ; and in defending against its enemies that 
great system of British freedom, in which we have now a com- 
mon interest, and under the ruins of which, if it should be over- 
thrown, we must be buried in a common destruction. 

I am not ignorant, my lords, that this extraordinary construc- 
tion has received the sanction of another court, nor of the sur- 
prise and dismay with which it smote upon the general heart of 
the bar. I am aware that I may have the mortitication of being 
told, in another country, of that unhappy decision ; and 1 foresee 
in what confusion I shall hang down my head when I am told it. 
But I cherish too the consolatory hope, that I shall be able to tell 
them that I had an old and learned friend, whom I would put 
above all the sweepings of their hall, who was of a different 
opinion ; who had derived his ideas of civil liberty from the purest 
fountains of Athens and of Rome ; who had fed the youthful 
vigour of his studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their 
wisest philosophers and statesmen ; and who had refined the 
theory into the quick and exquisite sensibility of moral instinct, 
by contemplating the practice of their most illustrious examples ; 
by dwelling on the sweet souled piety of Cimon ; on the anticipa- 
ted Christianity of Socrates ; on the gallant and pathetic patriot- 
ism of Epaminondas ; on that pure austerity of Fabricus, whom 
to move from his integrity, would have been more diflicult than 
to have pushed the sun from his course. I would add, that if he 
had seemed to hesitate, it was but for a moment ; that his hesita- 
tion was like the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun, 
and hides it from the view, and does so for a moment hide it, by 
involving the spectator without even approaching the face of the 
luminary : and this soothing hope 1 draw from the dearest and 
tenderest recollections of my life, from the remembrance of those 
Attic nights, and those refections of the gods which we have 
spent with those admired and respected and beloved companions 
who have gone before us ; — over whose ashes the most precious 
tears of Ireland have been shed : yes, my good lord, I see you do 



278 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

not forget them ; I see their sacred forms passing in sad review 
before your memory ; 1 see your pained and softened fancy re- 
calling those happy meetings, when the innocent enjoyment of 
social mirth expanded into the nobler warmth of social virtue ; 
and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizon 
of man ; — when the swelling heart conceived and communicated 
the pure and generous purpose, — when my slenderer and younger 
taper imbibed its borrowed light from the more matured and 
redundant fountain of yours. Yes, my lord, we can remember 
those nights without any other regret than that they can never 
more return, for 

" We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine ; 

But search of deep philosophy. 

Wit, eloquence and poesy. 
Arts which 1 lov'd ; for they, my friend, were thine."* 

But, my lords, to return to a subject from which to have thus 
far departed, I think, may not be whoi'ly without excuse. The 
express object of the forty-fourth was to send persons /rom places 
where they were not triable by law, back to the places that had 
jurisdiction to try them. And in those very words does Mr. 
Justice Blackstone observe on the thirteenth of the king, that it 
was made to prevent impunity by escape, by giving a power of 
" sending back" such offenders as had so escaped. 

This topic of argument would now naturally claim its place in 
the present discussion. I mention it now, that it might not be 
supposed that I meant to pretermit so important a consideration. 
And I only mention it, because it will connect itself with a sub- 
sequent head of this inquiry in a manner more forcibly applica- 
ble to the object ; when, 1 think I may venture to say, it will ap- 
pear to demonstration, that if the offence charged upon the de- 
fendant is triable at all, it is triable in Ireland and no where else ; 
and of course that the prosecutors are acting in direct violation 
of the statute, when they seek to transport him from a place 
wh€re he can be tried, into another country that can have no 
possible jurisdiction over him. 

Let us now, my lords, examine the next position contended for 
by those learned prosecutors. Having laboured to prove that 
the act applies not merely to capital crimes, but to all offences 

* Lord Avonmore was certainly a strong likeness to the picture. Those who know 
him perceive and acknowledge it. 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 279 

whatsoever ; having laboured to show that an act for preventing 
impunity by escape, extends to cases not only where there was no 
escape, but where escape in fact was physically impossible, they 
proceed to put forward boldly a doctrine which no lawyer, I do 
not hesitate to say it, in Westminister-hall would have the folly 
or the temerity to advance ; that is, that the defendant may, 
by construction of law, be guilty of the offence in Westminister, 
though he should never have passed within its limits till he was 
sent thither to be tried : with what a fatal and inexorable uniform- 
ity do the tempers and characters of men domineer over their 
actions and conduct ! How clearly must an Englishman, if by 
chance there be any now listening to us, discern the motives and 
principles that dictated the odious persecutions of 1794 re-as- 
suming their operations ; forgetting that public spirit by which 
they were frustrated ; unappalled by fear, undeterred by shame, 
and returning again to the charge ; the same wild and impious 
nonsense of constructive criminality, the same execrable appli- 
cation of the ill understood rules of a vulgar, clerk-like, and illiter- 
ate equity, to the sound and plain and guarded maxims of the 
criminal law of England ! the purest, the noblest, the chastest 
system of distributive justice that was ever venerated by the 
wise or preverted by the foolish, or that the children of men in 
any age or climate of the world have ever yet beheld ; the same 
instruments, the same movements, the same artists, the same doc- 
trines, the same doctors, the same servile and infuriate contempt 
of humanity, and persecution of freedom ! the same shadows of 
the varying hour that extend or contract their length, as the 
beam of a rising or sinking sun plays upon the gnomon of self- 
interest ! How demonstratively does the same appetite for mice 
authenticate the identity of the transformed princess that had 
been once a cat. 

But it seems as if the whole order and arrangement of the 
moral and the physical world had been contrived for the in- 
struction of man, and to warn him that he is not immortal. In 
every age, in every country, do we see the natural rise, advance- 
ment, and decline of virtue and of science. So it has been in 
Greece, in Rome ; so it must be, I fear, the fate of England. In 
science, the point of its maturity and manhood is the commence- 
ment of its old age ; the race of writers, and thinkers, and rea- 
soners passes away, and gives place to a succession of men that 
3M 



280 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OP THE KING 

can neither write, nor think, nor reason. The Hales, the HoUs, 
and the Somers, shed a transient light upon mankind, but are soon 
extinct and disappear, and give place to a superficial and over 
weening generation of laborious and strenuous idlers, — of silly 
scholiasts, of wrangling mooters, of prosing garrulists, who ex- 
plore their darkling ascent upon the steps of science, by the 
balustrade of cases and manuscripts, who calculate their depth by 
their darkness, and fancy they are profound because they feel 
they are perplexed. When the race of the Palladios is extinct, 
you may expect to see a clumsy hod-man collected beneath the 
shade of his shoulders, =^^>i? t"--*^' tayxpzi £ jo^os :t.^pu,;r«,v >c£?:6x>,v ;4«., s^^.-xi ^f^ov^, 
affecting to fling a builder's glance upon the temple, on the propor- 
tion of its pillars ; and to pass a critic's judgment on the doctrine 
that should be preached within them. 

Let it not, my lords, be considered amiss, that I take this up 
rather as an English than an Irish question. It is not merely 
because we have no habeas corpus law in existence ; (the anti- 
quarian may read of it, though we do not enjoy it ;) it is not 
merely because my mind refuses to itself the delusion of imaginary 
freedom, and shrinks from the meanness of affecting an indignant 
haughtiness of spirit that belongs not to our condition, that I am 
disposed to argue it as an English question ; but it is because I 
am aware, that we have now a community of interest, and of 
destiny that we never had before — because I am aware, that, 
blended as we now are, the liberty of man must fall where it is 
highest, or rise where it is lowest, till it finds its common level in 
the common empire — and because, also, I wish that Englishmen 
may see, that we are conscious that nothing but mutual bene- 
volence and sympathy can support the common interest that 
should bind us against the external or the intestine foe ; and that 
we are wilhng, whenever the common interest is attacked, to 
make an honest and animated resistance, as in a common cause, 
and with as cordial and tender anxiety for their safety as for our 
own. 

Let me now briefly, because no subject can be shorter or 
plainer, consider the principle of local jurisdictions, and con- 
structive crimes. 

A man is bound to obedience, and punishable for disobedience 
of laws : — first, because, by living within their jurisdiction, he 
avails himself of their protection ; and this is no more than the re- 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 281 

ciprocallty of protection and allegiance on a narrower scale : and 
secondly, because, by so living within their jurisdiction, he has the 
means of knowing them, and cannot be excused because of his 
ignorance of them. I should be glad to know, upon the authority 
of what manuscript, of what pocket-case, the soundness of these 
principles can be disputed? 1 should be glad to know upon 
what known principle of English law, a Chinese, or a Laplander, 
can be kidnapped into England, and arraigned for a crime which 
he committed under the pole, to the injury of a country which he 
had never seen — in violation of a law which he had never known, 
and to which he could not owe obedience — and, perhaps, for an 
act, the non-performance of which he might have forfeited his 
liberty or his life to the laws of that country which he was bound 
to know, and was bound to obey ? Very differently did our an- 
cestors think of that subject. They thought it essential to justice, 
that the jurisdiction of criminal law should be local and defined; 
that no man should be triable but there, where he was accused 
of having actually committed the offence ; where the character 
of the prosecutor, where his own character w^as known, as well 
as the characters of the witnesses produced against him ; and 
where he had the authority of legal process to enforce the at- 
tendance of witnesses for his defence. They were too simple to 
know any thing of the equity of criminal law. Poor Bracton or 
Fleta would have stared if you had asked them, " What, gentle- 
men, do you mean to say that such a crime as this shall escape 
from punishment !" Their answer would have been, no doubt, 
very simple and very foolish : they would have said, " We know 
there are many actions that we think bad actions, which yet are 
not punishable, because not triable by law ; and that are not 
triable, because of the local limits of criminal jurisdictions." And, 
my lords, to show with what a religious scrupulosity the locality 
of jurisdictions was observed, you have an instance in the most 
odious of all offences, treason only excepted — I mean the crime 
of wilful murder. By the common law, if a man in one county 
procured a murder to be committed which was afterwards actu- 
ally committed in another, such procurer could not be tried in 
either jurisdiction, because the crime was not completed in either. 
This defect was remedied by the act of Edward VI. which made 
the author of the crime amenable to justice. But in what juris- 
diction did it make him amenable? was it there where the 
2n 



282 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

murder was actually perpetrated ? By no means, but there only 
where he had been guilty of the procurement, and where alone 
his accessorial offence was completed. And here you have the 
authority of parliament for this abstract position, that where a 
man hving in one jurisdiction, does an act, in consequence of 
which a crime is committed within another jui'isdiction, he is by 
law triable only where his own personal act of procurement was 
committed, and not there where the procured or projected crime 
actually took effect. In answer to these known authorities of 
common law, has any statute, has a single decision or even dic- 
tum of a court, been adduced 1 Or, in an age when the pastry- 
cooks and snuff'-shops have been defrauded of their natural right 
to these compositions that may be useful without being read, has 
even a single manuscript been offered to shew the researches of 
these learned prosecutors, or to support their cause ? No, my 
lords ; there has not. 

I said, my lords, that this was a fruit from the same tree that 
produced the stupid and wicked prosecutions of 1794 : let me not 
be supposed to say it is a mere repetition of that attempt, with- 
out any additional aggravation. In 1794, the design, and odious 
enough it was, was confined to the doctrine of constructive guilt; 
but it did not venture upon the atrocious outrage of a substituted 
jurisdiction ; the Englishman was tried on English ground, where 
he was known, where he could procure his witnesses, where he 
had lived, and where he was accused of a crime, whether actual 
or constructive ; but the locality of the trial defeated the infernal 
malice of those prosecutions. The speeches of half the natural 
day, where every juryman had his hour, were the knell of 
sleep, but they were not the knell of death. The project was 
exposed, and the destined victims were saved. A piece so damn- 
ed could not safely be produced again on the same stage. It was 
thought wise, therefore, to let some little time pass, and then to 
let its author produce it on some distant provincial theatre for his 
own benefit, and at his own expense and hazard. To drag an 
English judge from his bench, or an English member of parlia- 
ment from the senate, and in the open day, in the city of Londoh, 
to strap him to the roof of a mail coach, or pack him up in a 
waggon, or hand him over to an Irish bailiff", with a rope tied 
about his leg, to be goaded forward like an ox, on his way to Ire- 
land, to be there tried for a constructive misdemeanor, would be 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 283 

an experiment, perhaps, not very safe to be attempted. These 
Merlins, therefore, thought it prudent to change the scene of 
their sorcery ; 

Modo RomjB, modo ponit Athenis ! 

The people of England might, perhaps, enter into the feelings of 
such an exhibition with an officiousness of sympathy, not alto- 
gether for the benefit of the contrivers — 

Nee natos coram populo Medea trucidet — 

and it was thought wise to try the second production before 
spectators whose necks were pliant, and whose hearts were bro- 
ken ; where every man who dared to refuse his worship to the 
golden calf, would have the furnace before his eyes, and think 
that it was at once useless and dangerous to speak, and discreet 
at least, if it was not honest, to be silent. — I cannot deny that it 
was prudent to try an experiment, that if successful, must reduce 
an Englishman to a state of slavery more abject and forlorn than 
that of the helots of Sparta, or the negroes of your plantations — 
for see, my lords, the extent of the construction now broadly and 
directly contended for at your bar. — The king's peace in Ireland, 
it seems, is distinct from his peace in England, and both are dis- 
tinct from his peace in Scotland ; and, of course, the same act 
may be a crime against each distinct peace, and severally and 
successively punishable in each country — so much more inveter- 
ate is the criminality of a constructive than of an actual offence. 
So that the same man for the same act against laws that he 
never heard of, may be punished in Ireland, be then sent to 
England by virtue of the warrant of Mr. Justice Bell, indorsed 
by my lord Ellenborough, and, after having his health, his hopes, 
and his property destroyed for his constructive offences against 
his majesty's peace in Ireland, and his majesty's peace in Eng- 
land, he may find that his majesty's peace in the Orkneys has, 
after all, a vested remainder in his carcass ; and, if it be the case 
of a libel, for the full time and term of fourteen years from the 
day of his conviction before the Scottish jurisdiction, to be fully 
completed and determined. Is there, my lords, can there be a 
man who hears me, that does not feel that such a construction 
of such a law would put every individual in society under the 
despotical dominion, would reduce him to be the despicable chat- 
tel, of those most likely to abuse their power, the profligate of 



284 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

the higher, and the abandoned of the lower orders ; to the re- 
morseless malice of a vindictive minister, to the servile instrumen- 
tality of a trading justice ? — Can any man who hears me con- 
ceive any possible case of abduction, of rape, or of murder, that 
may not be perpetrated, under the construction now shamelessly 
put forward? — Let us suppose a case: — By this construction a 
person in England, by procuring a misdemeanor to be committed 
in Ireland, is constructively guilty in Ireland, and, of course, tria- 
ble in Ireland — let us suppose that Mr. Justice Bell receives, or 
says he receives information, that the lady of an English noble- 
man wrote a letter to an Irish chambermaid, counselling her to 
steal a row of pins from an Irish pedlar, and that the said row 
of pins was, in consequence of such advice and counsel, actually 
stolen, against the Irish peace of our lord the king ; suppose my 
lord Ellenborough, knowing the signature, and reverencing the 
virtue of his tried and valued colleague, indorses this warrant ; 
is it not clear as the sun, that this English lady may, in the dead 
of night, be taken out of her bed, and surrendered to the mercy 
of two or three Irish bailiffs, if the captain that employed them 
should happen to be engaged in any cotemporary adventure 
nearer to his heart, without the possibility of any legal authority 
interposing to save her, to be matronized in a journey by land, and 
a voyage by sea, by such modest and respectable guardians, to be 
dealt with during the journey as her companions might think 
proper — and to be dealt with after by the worshipful correspond- 
ent of the noble and learned lord, Mr. Justice Bell, according to 
law? — I can, without much difficulty, my lords, imagine, that 
after a year or two had been spent in accounts current, in draw- 
ing and re-drawing for human flesh, between our worthy Bells 
and Medlicots on this side of the water, and their noble or their 
ignoble correspondents on the other, that they might meet to set- 
tle their accounts, and adjust their balances, I can conceive that 
the items might not be wholly destitute of curiosity : — Brother B. 
I take credit for the body of an English patriot. — Brother E., I 
set ofT against it that of an Irish judge. — Brother B., I charge 
you in account with three English bishops. — Brother E., I set off" 
Mrs. M'Lean and two of her chickens ; petticoat against petti- 
coat. — Brother B., 1 have sent you the body of a most intractable 
disturber, a fellow that has had the impudence to give a thresh- 
ing to Bonaparte himself; I have sent you Sir Sidney. — Dearest 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 285 

brother E. — But I see my learned opponents smile — 1 see their 
meaning. — I may be told, that I am putting imaginary and ludi- 
crous, but not probable, and therefore, not supposable cases. — 
But I answer, that reasoning would be worthy only of a slave, 
and disgraceful to a freeman. I answer, that the condition and 
essence of rational freedom is, not that the subject probably will 
not be abused, but that no man in the state shall be clothed with 
any discretionary power, under the colour and pretext of which 
he can dare to abuse him. As to probability, I answer, that in 
the mind -of man there is no more instigating temptation to the 
most remorseless oppression, than the rancour and malice of irri- 
tated pride and wounded vanity. — To the argument of improba- 
bility, I answer, the very fact, the very question in debate, nor 
to such answer can I see the possibility of any reply, save that the 
prosecutors are so heartily sick of the point of view into which 
they have put themselves by their prosecution, that they are not 
likely again to make a similar experiment. But when I see any 
man fearless of power, because it possibly, or probably, may not 
be exercised upon him, I am astonished at his fortitude ; I am as- 
tonished at the tranquil courage of any man who can quietly see 
that a loaded cannon is brought to bear upon him, and that a 
fool is setting at its touch-hole with a lighted match in his hand. 
And yet, my lords, upon a little reflection, what is it, after what 
we have seen, that should surprise us, however it may shock us ? 
What have the last ten years of the world been employed in, but 
in destroying the land-marks of rights, and duties, and obligations; 
in substituting sounds in the place of sense ; in substituting a vile 
and canting methodism in the place of social duty and practical 
honour ; in suffering virtue to evaporate into phrase, and moral- 
ity into hypocrisy and affectation ? — We talk of the violations 
of Hamburgh or of Baden ; we talk of the despotical and re- 
morseless barbarian who tramples on the common privileges of 
the human being ; who, in defiance of the most known and sa- 
cred rights, issues the brutal mandate of usurped authority; who 
brings his victim by force within the limits of a jurisdiction to 
which he never owed obedience, and there butchers him for a 
constructive offence. Does it not seem as if it was a contest 
whether we should be more scurrilous in invective, or more atro- 
cious in imitation ? Into what a condition must we be sinking, 
when we have the front to select as the subjects of our obloquy, 



286 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

those very crimes which we have flung behind us in the race of 
profligate rivaHty ! 

My lords, the learned counsel for the prosecutors have asserted, 
that this act of the forty-fourth of the king extends to all offences, 
no matter how long or previously to it they may have been com- 
mitted — The words are, " That from and after the first day of 
August, 1804, if any person, &c. shall escape, &c." — Now, cer- 
tainly nothing could be more convenient for the purpose of the 
prosecutors than to dismiss, as they have done, the words " escape 
and go into," altogether. If those words could have been saved 
from the ostracism of the prosecutors, they must have designated 
some act of the offenders, upon the happening or doing of which 
the operation of the statute might commence ; but the tempo- 
rary bar of these words they wave by the equity of their own 
construction, and thereby make it a retrospective law ; and having 
so construed it a manifestly ex post facto law, they tell you it is no 
such thing, because it creates no new offence, and only makes 
the offender amenable who was not so before. The law pro- 
fesses to take effect only from and after the first of August 1804. 
Now for eighteen months before that day, it is clear that Mr. 
Johnson could not be removed, by any power existing, from his 
country and his dwelling ; but at the moment the act took effect, 
it is made to operate upon an alleged offence, committed, if at 
all, confessedly eighteen months before. But another word as to 
the assertion, that it is not ex post facto,\iecQ.\x&e it creates no new 
crime, but only makes the party amenable. The force of that 
argument is precisely this: — If this act inflicted deportation on 
the defendant by way of punishment after his guilt had been es- 
tablished by conviction, that would, no doubt, be tyrannical, be- 
cause ex post facto; but here he suffers the deportation, while the 
law is bound to suppose him perfectly innocent ; and that only 
by way of process to make him amenable, not by way of punish- 
ment : and surely he cannot be so unreasonable as not to feel the 
force of the distinction. How naturally, too, we find similar 
outrages resort to similar justifications ! Such exactly was the 
defence of the forcible entry into Baden. Had that been a brutal 
violence, committed in perpetration of the murder of the unfor- 
tunate victim, perhaps very scrupulous moralists might find some- 
thing in it to disapprove ; but his imperial majesty was too deli- 
cately tender of the rights of individuals and of nations, to do 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 287 

any act so flagrant as that would be, if done in that point of 
view ; but his imperial majesty only introduced a clause of ne 
omittas into his warrant, whereby the worshipful Bells and Med- 
licots that executed it, were authorized to disregard any sup- 
posed fantastical privilege of nations that gave sanctuary to 
traitors ; and he did that from the purest motives ; from as disin- 
terested a love of justice as that of the present prosecutors, and 
not at all in the way of an ex post facto law, but merely as process 
to bring him in, and make him amenable to the competent and 
unquestionable jurisdiction of the hois de Roulog7ie. — Such are the 
wretched sophistries to which men are obliged to have recourse, 
when their passions have led them to do what no thinking man 
can regard without horror ; what they themselves cannot look at 
without shame ; and for which no legitimate reasoning can sug- 
gest either justification or excuse. Such are the principles of 
criminal justice, on which the first experiment is made in Ireland ; 
but I venture to pledge myself to my fellow-subjects of Great 
Britain, that if the experiment succeeds, they shall soon have the 
full benefit of that success. I venture to promise them, they shall 
soon have their full measure of this salutary system for making 
men " amenable," heaped and running over into their bosoms. 

There now remains, my lords, one, and only one topic of this 
odious subject, to call for observation. The offence here ap- 
pears by the return and the affidavits to be a libel upon the Irish 
government, published by construction in Westminster. Of the 
constructive commission of a crime in one place by an agent, 
who, perhaps, at the moment of the act, is in another hemisphere, 
you have already enough : — here, therefore, we will consider it 
simply as an alleged libel upon the Irish government; and 
whether, as such, it is a charge coming within the meaning of 
the statute, and for which a common justice of peace in one 
kingdom is empowered to grant a warrant for conveying the 
person accused for trial into the other. Your lordships will ob- 
serve, that in the whole catalogue of crimes for which a justice 
of peace may grant a warrant, there is not one that imposes 
upon him the necessity of deciding upon any matter of law, in- 
volving the smallest doubt or difficulty whatsoever. In treason, 
the overt act ; in felony, whether capital or not, the act ; in 
misdemeanors, the simple act ; the dullest justice can understand 
what is a breach of the peace, and can describe it in his warrant. 
3J?J 



288 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

It is no more than the description of a fact which the informer 
has seen and sworn to. But no libel comes within such a class, 
for it is decided over and over, that a libel is no breach of the 
peace; and upon that ground it was that Mr. Wilkes, in 1763, 
was allowed the privilege of parliament, which privilege does 
not extend to any breach of the peace. 

See then, my lords, what a task is imposed upon a justice of 
the peace, if he is to grant such a warrant upon such a charge : 
he no doubt may easily comprehend the allegation of the in- 
former as to the fact of writing the supposed libel ; in deciding 
whether the facts sworn amounted to a publication or not, I 
should have great apprehension of his fallibility; but if he got 
over those difficulties, I should much fear for his competency to 
decide what given facts would amount to a constructive publi- 
cation. — But even if he did solve that question, a point on which, 
if I were a justice, I should acknowledge myself most profoundly 
ignorant, he would then have to proceed to a labour in which I 
believe no man could expect him to succeed : that is, how far the 
paper sworn to was, in point of legal constructionj libellous or not. 
I trust this court will never be prevailed upon to sanction, by 
its decision, a construction that would give to such a set of men 
a power so incompatible with every privilege of liberty, or of 
law. To say it would give an irresistible power of destroying 
the liberty of the press in Ireland, would, I am aware, be but a 
silly argument, where such a thing has long ceased to exist ; 
but I have for that very reason a double interest now, as a sub- 
ject of the empire, in that noble guardian of liberty in the sister 
nation. When my own lamp is broken, I have a double interest 
in the preservation of my neighbour's. But if every man in Eng- 
land, who dares to observe, no matter how honestly and justly, 
upon the conduct of Irish ministers, is liable to be torn from his 
family, and dragged hither by an Irish bailiff, for a constructive 
libel against the Irish government, and upon the authority of an 
Irish warrant, no man can be such a fool as not' to see the conse- 
quence. The inevitable consequence is this : that at this awful 
crisis, when the weal, not of this empire only, but of the whole 
civilized world, depends on the steady faith and the consolidated 
efforts of these two countries — when Ireland is become the right 
arm of England — when every thing that draws the common in- 
terest and affection closer gives the hope of life — when every 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 289 

thing that has even a tendency to relax that sentiment is a 
s.ymptom of death, — even at such a crisis may the rashness or 
folly of those entrusted with its management so act as to destroy 
its internal prosperity and repose, and lead it into the two-fold, 
fatal error, of mistaking its natural enemies for its friends, and its 
natural friends for its natural enemies; without any man being 
found so romantically daring as to give notice of the approaching 
destruction. 

My lords, I suppose the learned counsel will do here what 
they have done in the other court ; they will assert, that this 
libel is not triable here ; and they will argue, that so false and 
heinous a production surely ought to be triable somewhere. As 
to the first position, I say the law is directly against them. From 
a very early stage of the discussion, the gentlemen for the pro- 
secution thought it wise for their clients, to take a range into the 
facts much more at large than they appeared on the return to 
the writ, or even by the aflidavits that have been made ; and 
they have done this to take the opportunity of aggravating the 
guiit of the defendant, and at the same time of panegyrising their 
clients ; they have therefore not argued upon the libel generally 
as a libel, but they thought it prudent to appear perfectly ac- 
quainted with the charges which it contains : — they have there- 
fore assumed, that it relates to the transactions of the twenty- 
third of July, 1803, and that the guilt of the defendant was, that 
he wrote that letter in Ireland, which was afterwards published 
in England ; not by himselx", but by some other persons. Now, 
on these facts, nothing can be clearer than that he is triable 
here. If it be a libel, and if he wrote it here, and it was pub- 
lished in England, most manifestly there must have been a pre- 
cedent publication, not merely by construction of law, in Ireland, 
but a publication by actual fact ; and for this plain reason, if 
you for a moment suppose the libel in his possession (and if he 
did in fact write it, I can scarcely conceive that it was not, un- 
less he wrote it perhaps by construction,) there was no physical 
means of transmitting it to England that would not amount to a 
publication here ; because, if he put it into the post-office, or 
gave it to a messenger to carry thither, that would be complete 
evidence of publication against him : so would the m.ere posses- 
sion of the paper, in the hands of the witness who appeared and 
produced it, be perfect evidence, if not accounted for or contra- 
2o 



290 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

dieted, to charge him with the pubUcation ; so that really 1 am 
surprised how gentlemen could be betrayed into positions so ut- 
terly without foundation. They would have done just as use- 
fully for their clients, if they had admitted, what every man 
knows to be the fact, that is, that they durst not bring the charge 
before an Irish jury. The facts of that period were too well un- 
derstood. The Irish public might have looked at such a prose- 
cution with the most incredulous detestation ; and if they had 
been so indiscreet as to run the risk of coming before an Irish 
jury, instead of refuting the charges against them as a calumn}'-, 
they would have exposed themselves to the peril of establishing 
the accusation, and of raising the character of the man whom 
they had the heart to destroy, because he had dared to censure 
them. Let not the learned gentlemen, I pray, suppose me so un- 
gracious as to say, that this publication, which has given so much 
pain to their clients, is actually true ; I cannot personally know 
it to be so, nor do I say so, nor is this the place or the occasion to 
say that it is so. I mean only to speak positively to the question 
before you, which is matter of law. But as the gentlemen them- 
selves thought it meet to pronounce an eulogy on their clients, I 
thought it rather unseemly not to show that I attended to them : 
I have most respectfully done so ; I do not contradict any praise 
of their virtues or their wisdom, and I only wish to add my very 
humble commendation of their prudence and discretion, in not 
bringing the trial of the present libel before a jury of this 
country. 

The learned counsel have not been contented with abusing 
this libel as a production perfectly known to them ; but they 
have wandered into the regions of fancy. No doubt the other 
judges, to whom those pathetic flights of forensic sensibility were 
addressed, must have been strongly affected by them. The 
learned gentlemen have supposed a variety of possible cases. 
They have supposed cases of the foulest calumniators aspersing 
the most virtuous ministers. Whether such supposed cases have 
been suggested by fancy, or by fact, it is not for me to decide ; 
but I beg leave to say, that it is as allowable to us as to them to 
put cases of supposition : 



-Cur ego si fingere pauca 



Possum, invidear? 

Let me then, my lords, put an imaginary case of a different kind : — 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 291 

Let me suppose, that a great personage, entrusted with the safe- 
ty of the citadel (meaning and wishing perhaps well, but misled 
by those lacquered vermin that swarm in every great hall,) 
leaves it so loosely guarded, that nothing but the gracious inter- 
position of Providence has saved it from the enemy. Let me sup- 
pose another great personage going out of his natural depart- 
ment, and, under the supposed authority of high station, dissemi- 
nating such doctrines as tend to root up the foundation of society 
— to destroy all confidence between man and man — and to im- 
press the great body of the people with a delusive and desperate 
opinion, that their religion could dissolve or condemn the sacred 
obligations that bind them to their country — that their rulers 
have no reliance upon their faith, and are resolved to shut the 
gates of mercy against them. 

Suppose a good and virtuous man saw, that such doctrines 
must necessarily torture the nation into such madness and despair, 
as to render them unfit for any system of mild or moderate gov- 
ernment ; that if, on one side, bigotry or folly shall inject their 
veins with fire, such a fever must be kindled as can be allayed 
only by keeping a stream of blood perpetually running from the 
other, and that the horrors of martial law must become the dire- 
ful but inevitable consequence. In such a case, let me ask you 
what would be his indispensable duty ? — it would be, to avert 
such dreadful dangers, by exposing the conduct of such persons ; 
by holding up the folly of such bigoted and blind enthusiasm to 
condign derision and contempt : and painfully would he feel that 
on such an occasion he must dismiss all forms and ceremonies ; 
and that to do his duty with effect, he must do it without mercy. 
He should also foresee, that a person so acting, when he returned 
to those to whom he was responsible, would endeavour to justify 
himself by defaming the country which he had abused — for 
calumny is the natural defence of the oppressor : he should, there- 
fore, so reduce his personal credit to its just standard, that his 
assertions might find no more belief than they deserved. Were 
such a person to be looked on as a mere private individual, 
charity and good nature might suggest not a little in his excuse. 
An inexperienced man, new to the world, and in the honey-moon 
of preferment, would run no small risk of having his head turned 
in Ireland. The people in our island are by nature penetrating, 
sagacious, artful and comic — ' natio comacda est.' In no country 



292 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING 

under heaven would an ass be more likely to be hood-winked, by- 
having his ears drawn over his eyes, and acquire that fantastical 
alacrity that makes dulness disposable to the purpose of humor- 
ous malice, or interested imposture. In Ireland, a new great 
man could get the freedom of a science as easily as of a corpora- 
tion, and become a doctor, by construction, of the whole Ency- 
clopaedia, and great allowance might be made under such circum- 
stances for indiscretions and mistakes, as long as they related only 
to himself; but the moment they become public mischiefs, they 
lose all pretensions to excuse — the very ambition of incapacity is 
a crime not to be forgiven ; and however painful it may be to in- 
flict, it must be remembered, that mercy to the delinquent would 
be treason to the public. 

I can the more easily understand the painfulness of the conflict 
between charity and duty, because at this moment I am labour- 
ing under it myself; and I feel it the more acutely, because I 
am confident, that the paroxysms of passion that have produced 
these public discussions have been bitterly repented of I think, 
also, that I should not act fairly if I did not acquit my learned 
opponents of all share whatsoever in this prosecution — they have 
too much good sense to have advised it ; on the contrary, I can 
easily suppose, Mr. Attorney-general sent for to give counsel and 
comfort to his patient; and after hearing no very concise detail 
of his griefs, his resentments, and his misgivings, methinks I hear 
the answer that he gives, after a pause of sympathy and reflec- 
tion : — " No, sir, don't proceed in such a business ; you will only 
expose yourself to scorn in one country, and to detestation in the 
other. You know you durst not try him here, where the whole 
kingdom would be his witness. If you should attempt to try him 
there, where he can have no witness, you will have both coun- 
tries upon your back. An English jury would never find him 
guilty. You will only confirm the charge against yourself; and 
be the victim of an impotent, abortive malice. If you should 
have any ulterior project against him, you will defeat that also ; 
for those that might otherwise concur in the design, will be 
shocked and ashamed of the violence and folly of such a tyran- 
nical proceeding, and will make a merit of protecting him, and 
of leaving you in the lurch. — What you say of your own feelings, 
I can easily conceive. — You think you have been much exposed 
by those letters ; but then remember, my dear sir, that a man 



AGAINST MR. JUSTICE JOHNSON. 293 

can claim the privilege of being made ridiculous or hateful by no 
publications but his own. Vindictive critics have their rights, as 
well as bad authors. The thing is bad enough at best ; but if 
you go on, you will make it worse — it will be considered an at- 
tempt to degrade the Irish bench and the Irish bar ; you are not 
aware what a nest of hornets you are disturbing. One inevitable 
consequence you don't foresee ; you will certainly create the very 
thing in Ireland, that you are so afraid of — a newspaper ; think 
of that, and keep yourself quiet; and, in the mean time, console 
yourself with reflecting, that no man is laughed at for a long time : 
every day will procure some nev/ ridicule that must supersede 
him." — Such, I am satisfied, was the counsel given ; but I have 
no apprehension for my client, because it was not taken. Even 
if it should be his fate to be surrendered to his keepers — to be 
torn from his family — to have his obsequies performed by torch 
light — to be carried to a foreign land, and to a strange tribunal, 
where no witness can attest his innocence ; where no voice that 
he ever heard can be raised in his defence ; where he must stand 
mute, not of his own malice, but the malice of his enemies — yes, 
even so, I see nothing for him to fear : that all gracious Being, 
that shields the feeble from the oppressor, will fill his heart with 
hope, and confidence, and courage ; his sufferings will be his ar- 
mour, and his weakness will be his strength : he will find himself 
in the hands of a brave, a just, and a generous nation : he will 
find that the bright examples of her Russels and her Sidneys have 
not been lost to her children ; they will behold him with sympa- 
thy and respect, and his persecutors with shame and abhorrence ; 
they will feel, too, that what is then his situation, may to-morrow 
be their own — but their first tear wall be shed for him, and the 
second only for themselves : their hearts will melt in his acquit- 
tal ; they will convey him kindly and fondly to their shore ; and 
he will return in triumph to his country, to the threshold of his 
sacred home, and to the weeping welcome of his delighted family : 
he will find that the darkness of a dreary and a lingering night hath 
at length passed away, and that joy cometh in the morning. — No, 
my lords, I have no fear for the ultimate safety of my client. 
Even in these very acts of brutal violence that have been com- 
mitted against him, do I hail the flattering hope of final advan- 
tage to him, and of better days and more prosperous fortune for 
this afflicted country — that country of which I have so often 



294 SPEECH IN THE CAUSE OF THE KING, &c, 

abandoned all hope, and which 1 have been so often determined 
to quit for ever. 

Saepe vale dicto raulta sum deinde locutus 
Et quasi discedcns oscula summa dabam, 
Indulgens aniino, pes tardus erat. 

But I am reclaimed from that infidel despair — I am satisfied, that 
while a man is suffered to live, it is an intimation from providence 
that he has some duty to discharge, which it is mean and crimi- 
nal to decline : had I been guilty of that ignominious flight, and 
gone to phie in the obscurity of some distant retreat, even in that 
grave I should have been haunted by those passions by which 
my life had been agitated — 

duffi cura vivos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos. 
And, if the transactions of this day had reached me, I feel how 
my heart would have been agonised by the shame of the deser- 
tion ; nor would my sufferings have been mitigated by a sense of 
the feebleness of that aid, or the smallness of that service which 
I could render or withdraw. They would have been aggravated 
by the consciousness that, however feeble or worthless they were, 
1 should not have dared to thieve them from my country. — I 
have repented — I have staid — and I am at once rebuked and 
rewarded by the happier hopes that I now entertain. — In the 
anxious sympathy of the public — in the anxious sympathy of my 
learned brethren, do I catch the happy presage of a brighter 
fate for Ireland. They see, that within these sacred walls, the 
cause of liberty and of man may be pleaded with boldness, and 
heard with favour, t am satisfied they will never forget the 
great trust, of which they alone are now the remaining deposit- 
aries. While they continue to cultivate a sound and literate 
philosophy — a mild and tolerating Christianity — and to make both 
the sources of a just, and liberal, and constitutional jurispru- 
dence, I see every thing for us to hope. Into their hands, there- 
fore, with the most affectionate confidence in their virtue, do I 
commit these precious hopes. Even I may live long enough yet 
to see the approaching completion, if not the perfect accomplish- 
ment of them. Pleased shall I then resign the scene to fitter ac- 
tors — pleased shall I lay down my wearied head to rest, and say, 
" Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according 
to thy word ; for mine eyes have seen their salvation." 



COURT OF ROLLS. 

MERRY versus RT. REV. DOCTOR JOHN POWER, R. C. BISHOP 
OF WATERFORD. 



THE FACTS ARE AS FOLLOW. 

In 1804, Mary Pozccr made her will, bequeathing a consider- 
able part of her property to the Rev. John Power, and others, in 
trust for charitable purposes. Her brother Joseph, then a mer- 
chant in Spain, was her next of kin, and residuary legatee : he 
died intestate, and his son, the now plaintiff, came over and took 
out administration to his deceased father, and brought a suit in 
the spiritual court, to set aside the will, as unduly obtained, and 
as disposing of a large property to papists, and for superstitious 
uses. In that court the plaintiff applied for an administrator, 
pendente lite, and was refused. The present bill was filed, pray- 
ing that the effects might be brought into court. This bill was 
filed only a few weeks ; and now, before the defendant had an- 
swered, a motion was made by doctor Vavasour, for a receiver; 
and that doctor Power, the acting executor, should be ordered 
forthwith to bring the effects into court ; he relied on the q^ffida- 
vit of his client, the plaintiff, charging that the will was obtained 
by fraud by the defendant. Power, and that at best it could not 
be sustained, as being a trust altogether for popish uses. The 
motion was opposed by Mr. Prendergast, who strongly argued 
against the imputations thrown out upon the conduct of doctor 
Power, by the name of this " ojie John Power, a popish priest." 
He insisted, that under the whole circumstances there was no 
colour for impeaching the transaction ; that the bequests were 
most praise-worthy ; that there had already been a decree of 
this court obtained by the trustees of charitable donations, 
affirming the legality of the trusts, and that it would be unprece- 
dented for a court to interfere in this way, and before an answer 
3 295 



296 MERRY vs. POWER. 

came in ; or any delay or resistance, on the part of the defend- 
ant, io put in his answer. Other gentlemen, on both sides, argu- 
ed very zealously for their clients. 

His honor, (Mi-. Curran,) said, that if the question had been 
brought forward upon the mere rule of the court, he should not 
have thought it necessary to give many reasons for the order he 
intended to make ; but pressed so strongly as it has been, both by 
the arguments themselves, and perhaps more so by the style and 
manner of putting them, as well as the supposed policy which 
has been called in to aid them : 

" I think," said his honour, " I ought to state the grounds upon 
which I mean to act in my decision. First, then, it is urged, 
that this is the case of an insolvent and wasting executor, having 
fraudulently obtained the will. As to insolvency — to be an ex- 
ecutor it is not necessary to be rich ; integrity and discretion are 
the essential qualities of an executor. If the testator thinks he 
has found these in an executor of humble means, this court has 
no power to control him ; he may bestow his property as a gift 
to whom he pleases : it would be strange if he could not confide 
it as a trust to whom he chooses . I know of no necessary con- 
nexion between wealth and honesty ; — I fear that integrity is 
not always found to be the parent or offspring of riches. To 
interfere, therefore, as now sought, with this executor, would be 
little short of removing the will. But it is said this will has been 
obtained by fraud, practised by this " one Jolm Power. ''^ No doubt 
this court has acted, where strong ground of suspicion of fraud, 
and danger of the property being made away with, have ap- 
peared ; but, do these grounds now appear to this court 1 

Here his honour recapitulated the facts sworn to, and said : 

I see no semblance of fact to sustain such a charge. Who 
does this " one John Pozcer, a Popish priest," turn out to be ? — I 
find he is a catholic clergyman — a doctor in divinity, and the 
titular bishop in the diocess of Waterford. And yet I am now 
pressed to believe that this gentleman has obtained this will by 
fraud. Every fact now appearing repels the charge ; I cannot 
but say that the personal character of the person accused, repels 
it still more strongly. Can I be brought, on grounds like those 
now before me, to believe that a man, having the education of 
a scholar, the habits of a religious life, and vested with so high a 
character in the ministry of the gospel, could be capable of so 



MERRY vs. POWER. 297 

detestable a profanation as is flung upon him ? — 'Can I forget that 
he is a christian bishop, clothed not in the mere authority of a 
sect, but clothed in the indelible character of the episcopal order — 
suffering no diminution from his supposed heterodoxy, nor draw- 
ing any increase or confirmation from the merits of his conformity, 
should he think proper to renounce what we call the errors of 
his faith ? — Can I bring my mind on slight, or rather on no grounds, 
to believe, that he could trample under his feet all the impres- 
sions of that education, of those habits, and of that high rank in 
the sacred ministry of the gospel which he holds, as to sink to the 
odious impiety imputed to him 1 — Can I bring myself to believe 
such a man, at the dying bed of his fellow-creature, would be ca- 
pable with one hand of presenting the cross before her lifted eye, 
and with the other, of basely thieving from her those miserable 
dregs of this world, of which his perfidious tongue was employed 
in teaching her a christian's estimate 1 — I don't believe it ; on 
the contrary, I am (as far as it belongs to me in this interlocutory 
way, to judge of the fact) as perfectly convinced that the con- 
duct of doctor Power was what it ought to be, as I am that the 
testatrix is dead. 

" But," said his honour, " I am called on to interfere, it hehig a 
foolish bequest to superstitious, and those popish, uses ! I have looked 
into those bequests. — I find the object of them is to provide shelter 
and comfortable support for poor helpless females ; and clothes, 
and food, and instruction for poor orphan children. Would to 
God I could see more frequent instances of such bequests ! 
Beautiful in the sight of God must it be — beautiful in the sight 
of man ought it to be, to see the dying christian so employed — to 
see the last moments of human life so spent in acts of gratuitous 
benevolence, or even of interested expiation. — How can we be- 
hold such acts, without regarding them as forming a claim, as 
springing from a consciousness of immortality 1 In all ages the 
hour of death has been considered as an interval of more than 
ordinary illumination ; as if some rays from the light of the ap- 
proaching world had found their way to the darkness of the part- 
ing spirit, and revealed to it an existence that could not terminate 
in the grave, but was to commence in death. 

" But these uses are condemned, as being not only superstitious, 
but popish uses. As to that, I must say that I feel no disposition 
to give any assistance even to the orthodox rapine of the living, 
2p 



298 MERRY vs. POWER. 

in defeating even the heterodox charity of the dead. I am aware 
that this objection means somewhat more than directly meets 
the ear, if it means any thing. The objects of these bequests, 
it seems, are catholics, or, as they have been called, papists; 
and the insinuation clearly is, that the religion of the objects of 
this woman's bounty calls upon me to exercise some peculiar 
rigour of interference to abridge or defeat her intentions. Upon 
this point I wish to be distinctly understood ; I don't conceive 
this to be the spirit of our existing law ; nor, of course, the duty 
of this court to act upon that principle in the way contended for. 
In times, thank God, now past, the laws would have warranted 
such doctrines. TTiose laves owed their existence to unfortunate com- 
binatiofis of circumstances that zvere thought to render them necessary. 
But if we lookback zvith sorrow to their enactment, let us look forward 
with kindtiess and gratitude to their repeal. Produced by national 
calamity, they were brought, by national benevolence, as well as by na- 
tional contrition, to the altar of public Justice and Concord, and there 
offered as a sacrifice to atone, to heal, to conciliate, to restore social 
confidence, atid to give us that hope of prosperity and safety, which no 
people ever had, or deserved, or dared to have, except where it is 
founded on a community of interests, a perfectly even and equal 
participation of just rights, and a subsequent contribution of all 
the strength — of all the parts so equally interested in the defence 
of the whole. 

" I know they have been supposed to originate in religious bigot- 
ry — that is, religious zeal carried to excess — I never thought so. 
The real spirit of our holy religion is too incorruptibly pure and 
beneficent to be depraved into any such excess. Analyze the 
bigot's object, and we see he takes nothing from religion but a 
flimsy pretext in the profanation of its name ; he professes the 
correction of error and the propagation of truth. But when he 
has gained the victory, what are the terms he makes for himself? 
Power and profit. What terms does he make for religion 1 Pro- 
fession and conformity. — What is that profession ? the mere ut- 
terance of the lips — the utterance of sounds, that, after a pulsa- 
tion or two upon the air, are just as visible and lasting as they 
are audible. What is the conformity ? Is it the practice of any 
social virtue or christian duty 1 Is it the forgiveness of injuries, 
or the payment of debts, or the practice of charity ? No such 
things. It is the performance of some bodily gesture or attitude. 



MERRY vs. POWER. 299 

It is going to some place of worship. It is to stand or to kneel, 
or to bow to the poor box ; but it is not a conformity that has 
any thing to do with the judgment, or the heart, or the conduct. 
All these things bigotry meddles not with, but leaves them to re- 
ligion herself to perform. Bigotry only adds one more, and that 
a very odious one, to the number of those human stains which it 
is the business of true religion not to burn out with the bigot's 
fire, but to expunge and wash away by the christian's tears. — 
Such, invariably, in all countries and ages, have been the mo- 
tives to the bigot's conflicts, and such the use of his victories: 
not the propagation of any opinion, but the engrossment of power 
and plunder — of homage and tribute. Such, I much fear, was 
the real origin of our popery laws. — But power and privilege 
must necessarily be confined to very few. In hostile armies you 
find them pretty equal, the victors and the vanquished, in the 
numbers of their hospitals and in the numbers of their dead ; so 
it is with nations ; the great mass is despoiled and degraded, but 
the spoil itself is confined to few indeed. The result finally can 
be nothing but the disease of dropsy and decrepitude. In Ire- 
land this was peculiarly the case. Religion was dishonoured, 
man was degraded, and social affections were almost extinguished. 
A few, a very few still profited by this abasement of humanity. 
But let it be remembered, with a just feeling of grateful respect 
to their patriotic and disinterested virtue, and it is for this purpose 
that I have alluded as I have done, that that few composed the 
whole power of the legislature which concurred in the repeal of 
that system, and left remaining of it, not an edifice to be de- 
molished, but a mere heap of rubbish, unsightly, perhaps perni- 
cious — to be carted away. 

" If the repeal of those laws had been a mere abjuration 
of intolerance, I should have given it little credit. The growing 
knowledge of the world, particularly of the sister nation, had 
disclosed and unmasked intolerance ; — had put it to shame, and 
consequently to flight ! But though public opinion may proscribe 
intolerance, it camiot take away powers or privileges established by 
law. Those powers of exclusion and monopoly could be given up 
only by the generous relinquishment of those who possessed them. 
And nobly were they so relinquished by those repeahng statutes 
Those lovers of their country saw the public necessity of the 
sacrifice, and most disinterestedly did they make it. If too, they 



300 MERRY vs. POWER. 

have been singular in this virtue, they have been as singularly- 
fortunate in their reward. In general, the legislator, though he 
sows the seed of public good, is himself numbered with the dead 
before the harvest can be gathered. With us it has not been 
so — with us the public benefactors, many of them at least, have 
lived to see the blessing of heaven upon their virtue, in an uni- 
formly accelerating progress of industry and comfort, and liber- 
ality, and social affection, and common interest, such as I do not 
believe that any age or nation has ever witnessed. 

" Such do I know was the view, and such the hope with which 
that legislature, nozo 7Jo more ! proceeded so far as they went, 
in the repeal of those laws so repealed. And well do I know 
how warmly it is now remembered by every thinking catholic, 
that not a single voice for those repeals was or could be given 
except by a protestant legislator. With i7rfinite pleasure do I also 
know and feel that the same sense of justice and good will which then 
produced the repeal of those laws, is continuing to act, and with in- 
creasing energy, upon those persons, in both countries, whose worth and 
whose wisdom are likely to explode whatever principle is dictated by 
bigotry or folly ; and to give currency and action to whatever prin- 
ciple is wise and salutary. Such, also, I know to be the feelings of 
every court in this hall. It is from this enlarged and humanized 
spirit of legislation, that courts of justice ought to take their principles 
of expounding the law. 

" At another time I should probably have deemed it right to 
have preserved a more respectful distance from some subjects 
which I have presumed (but certainly with the best intentions, 
and, I hope, no unbecoming freedom) to approach : — but I see 
the interest the question has excited ; and I think it right to let 
no person carry away with him any mistake, as to the grounds of 
my decision, or suppose that it is either the duty or the disposition of 
our courts to make any harsh or jealous distinctions in their judg- 
ment, founded 07i any differences of religious sects or tenets. I think 
therefore, the motion ought to be refused ; and I think myself 
bound to mark still more strongly my sense of its impropriety, by 
refusing it with full costs." 



SPEECHES 



Right Hon. HENRY GRATTAN, 



PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS. 



301 



INTRODUCTION. 



When the editor of Mr. Grattan's speeches first entertained the 
idea of collecting and compiling the eloquence of his distinguished 
countryman, he was influenced by two considerations to the prose- 
cution of so important and national a work. The first, that the pre- 
sent circumstances under which his country was placed, required 
more than ever, the general diffusion of those principles which first 
tended to promote the happiness and prosperity of Ireland. The 
second, that he conceived he would add, in a great and eminent de- 
gree, to the many valuable works of this kind which are daily issu- 
ing from the press, and gratify that taste for eloquence which has 
been so much the object of every man's attainment and ambition. 
The only claim which the editor of this volume has to public pa- 
tronage is, that he has spared no labour in endeavouring to give to 
the public the most faithful reports of the speeches which he has col- 
lected, and that he has diligently examined the various records 
where the best and most faithful reports could be found. — That he 
has made every effort to do justice to the splendid talents of Mr. 
Grattan, by an attentive comparison of those reports, will, perhaps, 
be acknowledged by such readers, who have been witnesses of the 
great exertions of our orator ; exertions which now constitute a new 
era in English eloquence. In collecting the productions of that mind 
which so eloquently poured forth its treasures — in compiling, with 
industry and care, the labours of that man, whose talents raised his 
country from slavery to freedom, the editor hopes, if he shall not 
enjoy the praise, he may at least escape the severity, of the critic ; 
and that he shall have gratified the friend of literature, and the man 
of taste, the admirer of genius, and the advocate of liberal principles 
and enlightened legislation, by rescuing the speeches of Mr. Grat- 
tan from the mouldering records of newspapers, and the widely ex- 
tended surface of parliamentary debates : and it is a debt which the 
editor owes to the fame of this distinguished senator, to state, that 
those, and similar records, are the only sources from which he has 
taken the speeches now given to the public. 

3P 3«8 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
Speech in the Debate on National Economy, --.--- 305 

Speech in the Debate on Pensions, - - - - - - - -317 

Speech in the Debate on the Navigation Act, ------ 328 

Speech in the Debate on Tythes, .------- 338 

Speech in the Debate on the Riot Act, ..--... 354 



Patriotic Speech of Robert Emmett, as delivered at the Session House, Dublin, 
before Lord Norbury, .....,.-.- 364 

304 



SPEECH OF MR. GRATTAN, 



DEBATE ON NATIONAL ECONOMY. 



PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS. 

On the 9th of February, 1786, Mr. Thomas Connolly, of Cas- 
tletown, the first Irish Commoner, brought forward the two fol- 
lowing most important resolutions : 

The first resolution — " That this House did, in the last session, 
grant certain new taxes, estimated at 140,000/. per annum, for 
the purpose of putting an end to the accumulation of debt." 

The second — " That should the said taxes be continued, it is 
absolutely necessary that the expenses of the nation should be 
confined to the annual income." 

Few questions were ever discussed in the Irish parliament, on 
which its character so much depended, as those very important 
resolutions submitted by Mr. Connolly to its consideration. 

In the session of 1785, hopes were held out to the nation, that 
such an arrangement would be grounded upon the celebrated 
eleve?i Commercial Propositions, as would enable it to bear the 
burden of increased taxation with ease and convenience — that 
trade would be so extended — the resources of the coimtry so en- 
larged — its condition in every respect so ameliorated — the addi- 
tional taxation of 140,000/. per annum would, without distressing 
the people, have the happy efiect of equalizing the expenses of 
the nation to its revenues. — The eleven propositions, which had 
so elevated the hopes of Ireland, had equally alarmed the jea- 
lousy and intolerance of the English merchants ; and an universal 
clamour having been raised against them by ignorance and poli- 
tical intrigue, the minister was obliged to abandon a system which 
promised so much immediate rehef to Ireland, and such certain, 
though more remote, advantages to England. — In the place of 
2q 305 



306 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

those eleven propositions, of which all parties approved — which 
gave satisfaction to the boldest asserter of Irish freedom, the 
minister of England was compelled to substitute one which calm- 
ed and appeased the irritated feelings of Englishmen, while it 
outraged and insulted the pride and independence of Ireland. — 
This plan of commercial adjustment, agreed to by the British 
parliament, was sent over to Ireland for adoption or rejection by 
the parliament of the latter ; — this parliament, after a most able 
discussion of its merits, and an unparalleled display of eloquence 
by the patriots of that day, rejected the twenty propositions, which 
contained this new system, with indignation and contempt. 

The same incapacity to bear heavy taxation existed in 1786, 
as was experiened in 1784; and the opposition, at the head of 
which stood Mr. Connolly, conceived that half the promised ad- 
vantages of increased trade, flowing from the operation of the 
original eleven propositions^ could not be realized ; that the next 
duty of parliament should be,to economise the public expenditure 
as much as possible, thereby to compensate, in some degree, the 
loss of trade, and to enable the nation to bear up against the ad- 
ditional taxation, which had been granted in the hope of its en- 
joyment. — In the last session of the Irish parliament, a resolution 
passed, containing the principle, " that the annual revenue ought 
to be equalized to the annual expenditure — a principle ruinous to 
the commercial and landed interest, unless followed up by the 
reciprocal principle, " that the annual expenditure ought to be 
confined to the annual revenue ;" thus making the obligation mu- 
tual on the minister and the country. — To meet this principle, 
Mr. Connolly proposed his second resolution. The secretary and 
chancellor of the exchequer complained, that the object of the 
resolution was to bind up the hands of government — to disable 
them from providing against any emergencies which might hap- 
pen to arise — it deprived the crown of that degree of discretion 
with which the constitution had invested it, and which is neces- 
sary for the safety and honour of administration — it enjoined, that 
in all times, and under all circumstances, whether of foreign at- 
tack or of domestic disturbance — whether the revenue should 
rise or fall — that in all events the crown should be bound, by the 
admonition of parliament, not to exceed the annual income of the 
nation. — This, say the opponents of the resolution, never was at- 
tempted by the parliament of England — that, on the contrary, 



ON NATIONAL ECONOMY. 307 

from 1774 to 1780, session after session, the minister had a vote 
of credit of one million, to enable him to provide for such emer- 
gencies — that by such vote the English minister was enabled to 
send to Ireland a great sum of money, to provide for her unfore- 
seen emergencies, and at a period too, when the Irish exchequer 
was exhausted — that such a resolution tied up the hands of go- 
vernment from giving bounties to encourage industry, and to pro- 
mote the prosperity of the country — that a governmeut which 
could not be trusted, or whose power the parliament would be 
obliged to circumscribe with such a resolution, should not be suf- 
fered to exist — that the resolution (according to the special plead- 
ers for the crown) was an imperfect one — that it was so word- 
ed, as to give to any administration the opportunity of rendering 
it nugatory and inefficient — for, says the minister, examine the 
wording — " So long as the taxes of last year shall be continued, 
the expenses of the nation shall not exceed the revenue." — 
"What is the necessary deduction?" exclaimed lord Clare. — 
" Why, so soon as one of those taxes shall be withdrawn, the 
government may set off in the old career of profusion and extra- 
vagance — give us up the new taxes, and you may accumulate 
debt as fast as you please." To this reasoning, impertinent and 
sophistical as it must appear to every reflecting mind, Mr. Grat- 
tan replied, with his usual logical precision, and peculiar sagaci- 
ty ; — to the specious and wily quibbles of the special pleader, we 
see him oppose the integrity and wisdom of the statesman. — The 
profusion and extravagance, which it was the object of Mr. Con- 
nolly's motion to prevent, and which Mr. Grattan told the nation 
would follow from its rejection, soon after deluged every branch 
of the administration, and generated that fatal corruption and 
debility, which terminated in the destruction of the independent 
spirit of the landed interest, and the necessary extinction of Irish 
freedom. 

Mr. Grattan spoke to the following effect : 

" Mr. Speaker — Sir, the motion before you is very near a self- 
evident proposition — that a nation, after a great exertion to raise 
her revenues, ought not to exceed them. — I differ from these 
gentlemen who deny that the new taxes were granted in con- 
sideration of commercial advantages ; commerce was held forth 
the last session as one of the compensations ; to stop the progress 



308 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

of debt, was the other ; but if any man doubts whether comnner- 
cial advantages were in contemplation of the new taxes, look to 
the eleven resolutions, and let the record determine ; there you 
will find the resolution for the taxes a part of the new system of 
commerce ; the new taxes there evidently appear to have been 
asked on the credit of new commercial advantages, which were 
supposed likely to generate a new ability to bear them ; and as a 
further inducement, these taxes were also recommended by the 
stipulation of putting a stop to the further accumulation of debt. 
" Here, then, were held out two compensations — trade and eco- 
nomy : neither were to exist in promise, but both were to form 
part of your laws. Accordingly, by the eleventh proposition, the 
surplus of hereditary revenue was to make up home deficiency, 
before it could be applied to the navy of Great Britain ; and the 
English minister could not obtain Irish money, unless he became 
an Irish economist ! — Here was a self-operative principle of eco- 
nomy established, not in confidence, but in law ; this was the idea 
of the resolutions ; and even the commercial bill, which does in 
some measure betray that idea, does stipulate for economy, and 
provides that this house should in future proceed by estimate ; 
and that when government exceeded, the excess should fall on 
the English fund. Thus the new taxes were to be accompanied 
with two compensations, trade and economy ; the first compensa- 
tion is withdrawn. I do not inquire now whether the bill of the 
right honourable member was good or bad. I continue to think 
it execrable — but certainly it was not the condition held out, or 
the trade that was offered in the original propositions. You have 
lost one compensation — the trade; and the question is now, 
whether you will lose the other — economy 1 When gentlemen 
agreed to the first resolution this night proposed, that it was ne- 
cessary to stop the further accumulation of debt, I suppose them 
to have been sincere ; that they meant it not as a vile excuse for 
granting new taxes, but as the principle of the grant. I enter 
into the spirit of that principle, and affirm that the best method 
of securing its operation is to vote the second resolution. For the 
mere and unqualified increase of taxes, does not prevent, but 
rather encourages, the growth of debt, for it encourages the 
growth of expense ; it is an amnesty to past, and a spur to future 
profusion ; as if a father should say to his son — I will pay all your 
extravagance, by way of discouragement. This general obser- 



ON NATIONAL ECONOMY. 309 

vation applies to this country with peculiar force, because in this 
country there are peculiar causes of extravagance. 

" You have two administrations, that of Ireland, and that of 
Great Britain ; and of course a double patronage, and a two-fold 
authority to load your establishment: moreover, you have no 
appropriation of funds in Ireland, as there is in Great Britain ; 
and not having a special, you should surely have a general limit- 
ation; — again, we have no Irish cabinet — individuals may de- 
precate, may dissuade, but they cannot enforce their principles — 
there is no embodied authority in Ireland. 

" Again, your government constantly fluctuates ; your viceroys 
change every day — men of different parties and different princi- 
ples, faithful to private engagement, but not bound to any uni- 
form public system ; again, you have no decided responsibility in 
Ireland — the objects of your inquest might not be easily found ; 
in short, you have in this country the misfortune of a double ad- 
ministration, a double importunity, a fluctuating government, 
and a fugacious responsibility. 

" But, if you have any doubt, whether under these particular 
circumstances, the mere supply or growth of tax will prevent the 
growth of debt, turn to history. — I have heard of a nation in a 
situation similar to yours at this very period; a nation, who, 
wearied and exhausted by a disgraceful accumulation of debt in 
profound peace, determined to put an end to the pernicious prac- 
tice, paid off all her arrears, and raised her taxes to the estimate 
of her expenses ; but forgot one precaution, the precaution of 
checking the growth of expense, as one essential means of stop- 
ping the further accumulation of debt. — Behold the consequence ! 
In eleven years she doubled her debt, and multipHed all her ex- 
penses. — You are that nation. — You did, in 1773, agree to put 
an end to the pernicious practice of running in debt ; you paid 
off five half years' arrears to answer that end ; you raised your 
taxes above 100,000/. a year to answer that end, and you took 
the minister's word for the further securing that object ; and ac- 
cordingly, you have since that time doubled your debt; and you 
have, besides, borrowed above 700,000/. in life annuities, and you 
have likewise added more to your expenses than the estimated 
amount of the new taxes. 

" Figures are irksome to this house — I shall therefore present 
you with a picture of your race of expense ; behold the map 



310 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

of your policy delineated by a very ingenious man, with talents 
and accuracy. 

" See the chart of your credit ; an evanescent speck just rising 
above the plane of the horizon, and then it drops ; while your 
debt ascends like a pyramid, with an audacious defalcation, and 
almost culminates in your meridian. — Midway of this mountain of 
debt, you will discern a line marking your effort to put an end to 
the practice of running in debt. — It is not necesary for a man to 
read, it is sufficient for him to see, in order to refute the honour- 
able and right honourable gentlemen on this subject. 

" From this experience then, as well as from general principles, 
I would infer, that if you mean to stop the growth of debt, it is 
necessary to stop the growth of expense. It has been said, this 
is making a covenant with government to live within its income. 
I say it is so; and I add, that a nation giving to her government 
140,000/. new taxes, has a right to insist on such a covenant. — 
Talk as you please, she approaches you, on this occasion, with 
the authority and superiority of a creditor and benefactor — she 
is not reduced to supplicate, but warranted to demand economy. 
" Government made her own estimate of revenue and of ex- 
pense ; the nation left both to her discretion — say what you want, 
and you shall have it ; but when you have got it, live upon it ; — 
the commercial interest of this country is to be advanced ; let 
us on that encouragement meet at once our domestic difficulties — 
a generous country pardons past profusion — come to an ac- 
count with her — state your wants, and state your taxes. This 
was the idea of the parliament ; and the question now is, whether 
government is to be limited by all the revenues she held to be 
sufficient for all the expenses she held to be necessary ; in short, 
whether in ordinary years, there shall be, in the kingdom of Ire- 
land, any such thing as limitation at all, in the management of 
the public purse ? To so plain a principle of political salvation, 
to a principle so particularly applicable to a nation, governed 
by viceroys from another country — a principle rendered so ne- 
cessary by the habits of importunity — a principle enforced by 
the experience of every year's debt, and admitted by the inward 
conviction of every man who hears me, what objection is made ? 
What bar can you suppose is advanced ? Would you believe it ? 
Could any man conceive it '? The objection is, that no one lord 
lieutenant can bind or answer for his successors ! Here is ad- 



ON NATIONAL ECONOMY. 311 

mitted that very jargon, that very disarrangement of council, that 
very irresponsibiUty of government, which we all lament, and on 
which gentlemen on the other side reply, and demand of you, for 
that very reason, to entrust the purse of the public to the faith 
of this discordancy of succession. We are not to impose restric- 
tions by parliament, because we cannot rely on the continuance 
or uniformity of the councils of government. To private en- 
gagements, however expensive, faithful indeed ! but with regard 
to public maxims, transient ! Here is their argument ! The in- 
firmity of our situation, which should induce your caution, is 
gravely urged as the infallible argument against your inter- 
ferency. Strange as this argument is, it yield,'? in extravagance 
to another grave objection, which immediately followed it ; an 
objection which affirmed that you ought not to limit your 
government in its income, because its expenses must rise. The 
very evil itself — the thing we dread ! We fear their expenses will 
rise — we fear the increase of your taxes will encourage those 
expenses — we apprehend that government will not meet us half 
way, so that economy on their side, may aid the new grants on 
your's, and secure us against the growth of future taxes, and fu- 
ture debts. To quiet these fears, we are told, in perfect serious- 
ness, that our expenses must increase. — You need not be afraid, 
you may be certain of the danger. — This argument, which threat- 
ened us with an increase of our expense, is attended with another, 
which threatens with the decrease of our revenue. What a 
strange image must those gentlemen have of the possible state of 
this country ! And what a much more strange provision do they 
make for such a conjuncture ! Your expenses must increase, 
and your revenue may fail ; and in contemplation of such an 
event, you ought not to limit your expenditure to your income. 
Eventful inability is urged as an argument against restraining 
the growth of your incumbrances, and the possible diminution of 
your expense. However, sir, this prophecy, I imagine, has but 
little foundation ; no more than the argument gentlemen construct 
upon it : the revenue of this country must rise. — You have taken 
care of that by your new grants — the wealth of this country 
must increase — nothing can prevent the growth of her riches, 
but the growth of her taxes. I would ask those gentlemen, who 
omen the decrease of your revenues, was it not themselves who 
made the estimates, both of revenues and expenses ? And when 
3q 



312 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

pressed to limit themselves to their own estimates, do they not 
now gravely tell us, that you cannot depend on either. It seems 
they rest the strength of their argument on the ruins of the credit 
of their estimates, in direct contradiction to this argument. But 
in opposition to this resolution, the same gentlemen, with the 
same conviction, affirm that the wealth of this country will in- 
crease most exceedingly. Here the prospect changes, for the 
sake of the argument ; and instead of a declining, you are repre- 
sented as a prosperous and rising state ; your manufactures are 
to increase most exceedingly ; but then your bounties are to in- 
crease also, and your revenues, by such a deduct are to fall. 
Gentlemen won't see that the increase of manufactures, the in- 
crease of export and of wealth, must have a general operation ; 
and if they add to the charge of your bounties, must in a much 
greater proportion add to revenues. No, no, say gentlemen ; the 
increase of manufactures, the general sale of their goods at home, 
and a thriving export, are the natural causes of the ruin of the 
revenue. It seems in Ireland the revenues are destroyed by the 
wealth of the nation. From a position at once so ignorant and 
so ludicrous, gentlemen proceed to their great hold, the main 
strength of their cause, and exclaim. What ! limit government 
to its income the very year in which his majesty's ministers have 
not applied for a vote of credit ! — I meet the strength of their ar- 
gument. I say, yes, this very year. I wave the advantage I 
possess in the general principle, that in ordinary years the state 
should be restrained by its own estimates of expense and revenue. 
I wave the additional advantage I have in the application of 
this principle to the particular circumstances, habits, and dispo- 
sitions of this country. I wave also the other sad advantage 
which my argument has in the experimental knowledge of the 
progress of your expense. I meet the gentlemen in the strength 
of their argument, and say that we ought to limit the growth of 
expense this very year in which you have not been called upon 
for a vote of credit. — Yes, this very year, when we have granted 
above 140,000/ on no compensation but the hope to stop the 
growth of debt and expense. This very year, in which we buy 
economy by our taxes, or get nothing. This very year, in which 
we perceive symptoms of departing from that economy. See 
your accounts. On a comparative view of the estimates for 1786, 
with the expenses for 1784, your civil list has increased above 



ON NATIONAL ECONOMY. 313 

23,000L per annum; your military list has increased about 
80,000/. and your concorda turn exceeding above 12,000/. With- 
out a wish to criminate, (for a question of this sort is too high 
either for reflection or panegyric,) I ask, are not these symptoms 
sufficient to induce this house, when it continues the new grants, 
in order to stop the growth of debt, to take some precaution to 
check the career of expense ; the danger of adding to the pen- 
sion list, of adding to the salaries of officers, and of such unavail- 
ing, heedless, and improvident donations? In the course of this 
debate, we are reminded and checked by another argument, that 
exclaims, your bounties ! your bounties ! parliamentary grants, 
your public jobs, these are a great cause of the growth of your 
debt and increase of your expenses, as if the public was eased, 
because the government was not the only hand that heaped 
burden upon her back. What, are there then so many different 
causes 1 so many pretences all combining to increase our ex- 
penses ? From hence I argue for, and the gentlemen against, a 
resolution of restraint ; the complication of disorders, it seems, to 
them, is a reason against the remedy. 

" I admire the unfeigned zeal with which those gentlemen 
espouse the cause of the manufacturers ; but I cannot forget their 
discretion, when they, at the opening of the session, limited the 
sum to be granted to them, by a resolution which had restrained 
your grant, and precluded all manufactures which had not the 
last year partaken of the bounty. When these manufacturers, 
the objects of their compassion, are under your consideration, with 
great discretion and jealousy they discern the necessity of putting 
some limits, by resolution, to that species of bounty ; but when 
afterwards the same rule is proposed to be applied to themselves, 
when it is proposed to limit the expense of government, no, say 
the friends of ministers, don't impose on us such a rule, or the ab- 
solute necessity of living within income — pity the poor manufac- 
turers — have some regard to the infant state of your country — 
don't preclude those various meritorious claimants, (whom they 
themselves have precluded already.) 

" Sir, that principle which Government applied to manufac- 
turers, I would apply to themselves. I would have the obligation 
of economy to run along with- the new grants; I would have it 
the preamble of the bill, and the annual condition of its renewal, 
that the secretary might carry in his pocket the condition of the 

2r 



314 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

grant as an answer to solicitation ; that he might say to the im- 
portunate — Sir, you have claims — your reliance on our economy 
gives you just pretensions to expect public money, but our hands 
are bound — here is the act of parliament. This would save the 
right honourable gentleman the fear of offending, and the trouble 
of thinking. — Sir, in the course of these objections, gentlemen 
have not forgotten to insist on the possibility of unforeseen exi- 
gencies, as a reason against an obligation on the Irish minister, 
in oi'dinary years, to confine himself to his own estimate of ex- 
pense and revenue. I believe the English constitution does not 
warrant the objection — extraordinary emergencies (another word 
for reasons of state) should not be set up as a pretence for extra- 
ordinary powers in the crown. This principle is peculiarly ap- 
plicable to the case of money ; therefore it was that ship-money 
was held illegal, though it was insisted that the crown should 
have a power of levying money in great emergency ; the same 
principle which condemns the practice of unforeseen emergency, 
in support of a latitude to lay the foundation of taxes without the 
consent of parliament, by the reserved power of exceeding in- 
come. 

" Sir, this objection of unforeseen emergencies is peculiarly 
unseasonable now, because it happens to be falsified by his 
majesty's speech from the throne, which felicitates his people on 
the prospect of complete tranquillity. Had gentlemen reason to 
apprehend any danger, foreign or domestic, war or rebellion, I 
suppose they would have taken some precautions ; but I ask, 
what is there, in the general complexion of the times — what is 
there, in your sequestered situation, to justify this pretence of 
unforeseen emergency? — this affectation of "state mystery? A 
latitude not for exertion, but expense. What wars have you to 
wage ? What enemies have you to overwhelm? Against whom 
do you point the thunder of your arms ? No, no, your emergen- 
cies are of a different kind — the gentle solicitation, the fond im- 
portunity, and the kind reply on the subject of public money. 
These are your wars, these are your emergencies. Who would 
have imagined to have seen, in the course of this debate, that 
faded cockade of the Castle, covfidence, advanced on the side of 
the court — confidence in the Irish minister in the uncontrolled 
expenditure of Irish money ? — What, after all your experience, to 
prefer confidence to this resolution, requires, in my opinion, a 



ON NATIONAL ECONOMY. 315 

most robust conscience and a most infirm understanding. Desirous 
as we all are to pay every respect, and with every predilection 
in favour of our present viceroy, a young man of a very noble 
unsuspicious nature, exposed perhaps to much importunity : yet 
who can answer for his continuance 1 This confidence, then, must 
extend to all his successors, whoever they be, of whatever cast, 
party, principle, or capacity — but even that won't do. This con- 
fidence must extend to all the secretaries of all the future lord 
lieutenants. In the last seven years we had seven lord lieu- 
tenants and eight secretaries. . The confidence must then be ex- 
tended to the lords and commons of Great Britain, or rather to 
the king's commission, on a pure and perfect persuasion, that 
whom the king shall appoint, the Lord illuminates ; and where 
the purse is bestowed, there is the virtue and there is the econo- 
my. — This will not do ; it is not suflicient that viceroys should be 
gods — Irishmen must be angels, and importunity and solicitation 
cease ; and in that event I submit to the force of the argument 
of confidence, as something not according to reason, but above it. 
" I have troubled you long ; but before I sit down I must ob- 
serve, that the success of your manufactures is much interested 
in this motion. Gentlemen are not to be informed, that the great 
commercial resources which Ireland possesses is not capital, but 
a comparative exemption from the weight of taxes. The in- 
crease of your expenses must operate therefore as a diminution 
of your commercial resources, and not only increase the undue 
influence of the British minister in the Irish parliament, but hin- 
der the competition of the Irish manufacturer in his own market. 
The nature of the new taxes tends the rather to excite the ap- 
prehension, because some of these taxes are registers ; taxes on li- 
cences to sell leather, soap, candles, &c. being in themselves of 
very small product, I fear them as a key to a more general tax- 
ation, and the more earnestly do I wish, therefore to stop the 
growth of expense. I think this is a good opportunity ; for I think 
the new grants give you a right to insist on establishing a great 
principle of economy. When we make new grants, let us make 
points for Ireland ; and while we are are generous to the crown, 
let us pay some attention to the interest of the people. Do not 
let any man suppose that the point of stopping the further accu- 
mulation of debt is gained already, because you are not called 
on for a loan for 1786; the reason being, that you borrowed 



318 SPEECH ON NATIONAL ECONOMY. 

200,000/. in 1785, and that you got one half year's produce of the 
new taxes. I make no doubt that the resolution, though reject- 
ed to-night, will have a good effect. The principle must be car- 
ried. Government must at least live within its income ; but then 
it is to such exertions, and to the urging such resolutions, you 
must attribute such an event." 

The principle of the first resolution moved by Mr. Connolly, 
being unequivocally admitted by the Chancellor of the Exche- 
quer, was unanimously agreed to. 

The question being put on the second resolution, there ap- 
peared, — Ayes — 73 — Noes — 149. 



SPEECH OF MR. GRATTAN, 

IN THE 

DEBATE ON PENSIONS. 



PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS. 

Ojv the 20th February, 1786, Mr. Forbes moved for leave to 
bring in a bill " to prevent persons holding places or pensions 
under the crown from sitting or voting in the House of Commons." 
It is impossible to make mention of the name of this venerated 
and beloved friend of Irish independence, without recording our 
acknowledgment of the great and important services which he 
has rendered his country ; — indefatigable in the performance of 
his legislative duties — gifted with great talents, and possessed of 
extensive information — he always enlightened his audience on 
every subject he discussed, and often successfully communicated 
to his countrymen a portion of that spirit which animated and 
directed his judgment in debate. 

Mr. Grattan, in his celebrated letter to lord Clare, in the year 
1800, thus speaks of this distinguished Irish senator: 

" Mr. Forbes — a name I shall ever regard, and a death I 
shall ever deplore ; enlightened, sensible, laborious, and useful — 
proud in poverty, and patriotic — he preferred exile to apostacy, 
and met his death. — I speak of the dead — I say nothing of the 
living, but that I attribute to this constellation of men, in a great 
measure, the privileges of your country ; and I attribute such a 
generation to the residence of your parliament." Even such a 
man as Mr. Forbes, thus described by him who best knew his 
merits, and to whose superiority every Irishman with whom he 
acted bore equal testimony, could not escape the deluge of 
calumny, which swept away every man and every principle that 
was good or valuable in our island. — The slaughter of such cha- 
racters was essential to the completion of the grand, though re- 
mote object of putting down the country : and every corrupt 
hand which could wield a quill, was engaged in the honourable 

317 



318 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

service of defaming and traducing our Forbes's, our Daly's, our 
Flood's, and our Burgh's ; — their names, however, nov/ live in the 
hearts of the people they instructed and protected, while their 
calumniators are forgotten, or remembered oidij to be exe- 
crated. 

" Irishmen of the present day," says our admired orator — 
" may go to the graves of these honourable dead men — they may 
raise up their tomb-stones, as their calumniators threw them 
down ; — they will feel it more instructive to converse with the 
ashes of the one, than with the composiiiojis of the other." 

On the 6th March, 178G, Mr. Forbes moved the house to re- 
solve, " That the present application and amount of pensions on 
the civil establishment, are a grievance to the nation, and de- 
mand redress." 

On the discussion of this motion, it appeared, that in the year 
1757, the annual charge of pensions was only 45,000/. per an- 
num; and that, in that year a resolution passed the house, to the 
following effect, " That paying so great a sum in pensions, was 
an imprudent disposition of the public revenue, and a grievance 
which ought to be redressed." 

Tn 1785, the pension list amounted to 95,000/. which exceeded 
the whole amount of the civil establishment. 

From 1757 to 1785, every establishment, civil and military, 
greatly increased — the patronage of the crown was extended, 
and the national debt amounted to more than two millions. — The 
pension list of Ireland exceeded that of England. — The com- 
merce — the revenue, and the resources of the former, bore no 
competition with those of the latter. — " It was idle, therefore," 
said Mr. Forbes, " to talk of the independence of the Irish par- 
liament, whose members received wages from the crown." On 
this debate, Mr. Grattan made the memorable declaration, which 
seemed to have given such pain to the delicate feelings of minis- 
ters : — " Should I affirm," said Mr. Grattan, " that the pension 
list is not a grievance, I should affirm, in the face of my country, 
an impudent, insolent, and a public lie !" This motion, so essen- 
tial to the purity and independence of parliament, was lost. — On 
this occasion, Mr. Grattan occupied the attention of the house 
but for a short time. 

On the 13th March, Mr. Forbes presented his bill, to limit the 
amount of pensions, which was received, and read a first time ; 



ON PENSIONS. 319 

and on a motion being made, that the bill be read a second time, 
on the succeeding night, Mr. Curran, (now master of the Rolls) 
distinguished himself in an eminent degree, by a display of that 
sarcastic wit, and a happy exertion of that fancy, which fasci- 
nated every hearer, captivated the attention, and excited the 
admiration of every party, on either side of the house. The 
speech he delivered on this occasion, appearing to the editors, to 
be faithfully and correctly reported, they would feel it an act of 
great injustice to that celebrated orator, and inflexible Irishman, 
to deny to the readers of this volume, the pleasure which they 
have experienced in the perusal of one of the happiest efforts of 
that caustic humour, which consumed, while it enlightened, and 
planted a thorn in the bosom of the administration, which could 
not refuse their admiration of its powers. 

On this very interesting question, Mr. Curran addressed the 
chair. (See p. 73, mile.) 

Mr. Grattan now rose, and spoke as follows : 

" Sir, the gentlemen who have urged the most plausible argu- 
ment against the bill, have not taken the trouble to read it. They 
say, that it gives up the control of parliament over such pensions 
as shall not exceed the limits of the bill. No such thing — your 
control cannot be given up without express words ; but here there 
are express words to save it : here, aware of such a pretence, and 
that no colour should be given for such an objection, the pream- 
ble states the nature of the pensions which are to have any ex- 
istence at all, " such as are allowed by parliament." This ob- 
jection being answered by the bill, I must advert to another, 
which has nothing to say to the bill. 

" A right honorable member has declared the bill to be the 
most exceptionable that ever came into parliament ; and his 
reason for this most extraordinary declaration is most singular 
indeed, " because it restrains the ministers of the crown, and 
leaves the pension list open to both houses of parliament." — 
From thence he infers that a practice of profusion will ensue, and 
from hence j-^ou would infer that the pension list was not now 
open to the addresses of both or either of the houses of parlia- 
ment ; but the fact is, that the evil he deprecates, now exists ; 
that the bill does not give, but finds and leaves a power to both 
houses of parliament to address on such subjects. As the matter 
3R 



320 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

now stands, both or either of the houses of parliament may ad- 
dress for such charges, and the minister may also impose such 
charges with such addresses. You are thus exposed to the two 
causes of expense, the power of address in us, and the unlimited 
power of pensioning without address in the minister ; and the 
right honorable thinks you will increase profusion by removing 
one of its causes ; — the principal cause — the notorious cause — the 
unlimited power of the minister, the most constant, operative and 
plentiful source of prodigality. In the same argument he adds, 
that the power of parliament, in disposing of the public money, 
ruined this country, when there was a redundancy in the trea- 
sury, by serving the purposes of jobbing aristocracy. According 
to him, then, the greatest evils which can befal this country are 
a surplus in the treasury, and a restraint on the prodigality of 
the minister. — A prosperity which produces redundancy, and a 
constitutional bill which restrains the unlimited grants of the 
Grown, is his receipt for the ruin of Ireland. In the course of 
this argument my right honorable friend has spoken of economy. 
Sir, a friend of mine the other night moved a resolution on the 
principle of economy, " that your expense should not exceed your 
income ;" his motion was founded on an obvious maxim, that in 
ordinary years a government should be restrained by its own es- 
timate of expense and revenue ; his motion was rejected on two 
idle arguments : — That unforeseen emergencies might arise, was 
one argument ; but neither the complexion nor situation of the 
times warranted the apprehension of danger, and therefore the 
argument, if it had no corruption in contemplation, was fictitious 
and idle. The other argument against my friend's motion was, 
that the maxims of economy were adopted already by the pre- 
sent administration. — On what foundation, fact, or authority, such 
an argument was advanced, the catalogue of pensions can best 
determine. Those pensions are not words, but facts. I always con- 
ceived that the public treasure was, like the people's liberty, to be 
guarded rather by law than confidence ; and I thoug^it the new 
taxes a good opportunity for establishing such a safeguard. I 
thought that such a confidence, without such a safeguard, would 
encourage adnninistration at last into acts of profusion ; but I 
could not think the act of profusion would accompany the pro- 
fessions of economy and the grants of the people. I could not 
foresee that peculation would attend the birth of the tax. I will 



ON PENSIONS. 321 

consider this peculation, or the new catalogue of pensions, and 
then the bill — first the grievance, then the remedy. 

" See how this grievance will naturally affect the people : they 
will, perhaps, be inclined to think that they see in such a measure 
the old school revived — the old spirit of plunder renewed, when 
government in Ireland was nothing but j:he division of spoil. — 
They will remember that they have given new taxes, and that 
they have not received the commerce which was, I say, pro- 
mised, or the economy which was professed ; in short, they will see 
that you have gotten their money, and have given them, as com- 
pensation, a new list of pensions. 

" See how this grievance may affect the British government : 
when the British minister sees that he has incurred the odium of 
the new taxes, and of their misapplication, he will naturally ex- 
pect that his influence, at least, is augmented ; but when he finds 
that he has added nothing to his power, he will lament this attack 
on his credit. The British government will recollect, that to re- 
move the causes of discontent and jealousy in Ireland, Great 
Britain surrendered her assumed supremacy. Perhaps that 
government will not think itself well used in the present attempt 
to revive Irish jealousy, by the unnecessary peculation of their 
servants in Ireland. 

" See again how this grievance affects the Irish ministry. 
Why give Ireland a grievance, for no object on earth, but to 
lessen the credit of the Irish government 1 Gentlemen speak of 
reflection — that catalogue is the reflection. — You cannot conceal, 
nor justify, nor extenuate : your connivance would be aggrava- 
tion. The name of his excellency has been introduced to sway 
debate ; his friends come in too late to serve him on this subject ; 
they should have dissuaded him from giving the offence ; they 
should have told his excellency, that his list of pensioners v;ould 
be prejudicial to his fame, and was unnecessary to his support ; 
that the profit went to others, and the scandal to the government. 

" While I protest against this measure, as a most disinterested 
act of profusion on the part of government, and therefore as an 
act of the most superlative folly, yet will I say more of his grace, 
the Duke of Rutland ; more than his own servants have said of 
him ; they have said of him on this subject, what is ever said, 
that he is a lord lieutenant in the right ; I say he is an honest 
man in the wrong, which is better. 
2s 



322 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

" Having stated the grievance, as far as affects the three inter- 
ests concerned, I shall consider the defence ; and first, it is ad- 
vanced, that the pension list of Ireland is comparatively small — 
small, if you compare it to the royal establishments of England, 
or other countries. 

" J directly controvert that position; it is comparatively great ; 
for it is this moment equal to the pension list of Great Britain ; 
compare it to your hereditary revenue, and it is above one third 
of the net produce of that revenue ; and in the course of thirty 
years it has increased more than double. — Another argument 
advanced in its defence tells you, that the new pension list, or the 
last catalogue is small ; sir, it is greater than the produce of your 
new tax on hawkers and pedlars. Why continue that tax? 
Because government could not spare it. Why waste that tax ? 
When I see the state repose itself on beggars, I pity and submit. 
But when I see the state give away its taxes thus eviscerated 
from the poor ; when T see government come to the poor man's 
hovel for a part of his loaf to scatter it ; when I see government 
tax the pedlar to pamper the pensioner, I blush for the extortion 
of the state, and reprobate an offence, that may be well called 
prodigality of rapine. 

" Sir, when gentlemen say, that the new charge for pensions 
is small, let me assure them they need not be alarmed ; the 
charge will be much greater ; for, unless your interposition should 
deter, what else is there to check it 1 — will public poverty 1 No. 
New taxes ? No. — Gratitude for those taxes ? No.— Principle ? 
No. — Profession ? No. — The love of fame, or sense of infamy ? 
No. — Confined to no one description of merit, or want of charac- 
ter, under the authority of that list, every man, woman, and 
child in Ireland, have pretensions to become a public in- 
cumbrance ; so that since government went so far, I marvel that 
they have stopped, unless the pen fell out of their hand from 
fatigue, for it could not be from principle. 

" No, sir, this list will go on ; it will go on till the merchant 
shall feel it ; until the manufacturer shall feel it ; until the pension 
list shall take into its own hand the keys of taxation ; and instead 
of taxing license to sell, shall tax the article and manufacture 
itself; until we shall lose our great commercial resource, a com- 
parative exemption from taxes, the gift of our poverty, and get 
an accumulation of taxes to be the companion of our poverty ; 



ON PENSIONS. 323 

until public indignation shall cry shame upon us, and the mo- 
rality of a serious and offended community shall call out for the 
interposition of law. 

" As a further defence of this grievance, it is said that the 
House of Commons have, from time to time, addressed for pensions, 
and contributed to the incumbrance. — K those addresses were 
improper, government was guilty of covin, in not opposing the 
addresses in parliament ; and the argument then proposes an 
emulation of reciprocal expense, and the exhortation to mutual 
rapine. — If, on the other hand, these addresses were proper, the 
argument amounts to this — that there are many necessary charges 
on the pension list, therefore there should be more that are un- 
necessary ; and the greater the public charge on the revenues, 
the greater should be the misapplication. In the same spirit 
gentlemen have relied on bounties, and the scrambling committee. 
The fact, however, is, that the corn bounty is greatly diminished, 
and the scrambling committee is extinct ; but suppose the fact 
to be otherwise, what is the argument, but a proposal to parlia- 
ment to have the nation a victim to jobs on the one hand, and to 
pensions on the other. 

" In defence of this incumbrance it is further advanced, that 
old quality should be supported. — Admitted. — I have no personal 
dislike to any individual of the new catalogue. 

" I have for some great respect and love. The first name did 
honour to the chair, and is an honour to the parliament that 
provides for him. As to old quality, why not bring back the 
great Irish offices now in the hands of absentees, and give old 
quality great places instead of little pensions ! — Again, why the 
one under that description considered so late, and the other so 
little ? But is the merit of four or five of this catalogue the 
qualification of nineteen ; unless qualification, like the plague, is 
caught by contagion. 

Sir, in so very numerous a list, it is almost impossible that some 
meritorious persons should not have been obtruded ; and yet in 
so numerous a list, it is astonishing there should be so few of that 
description. One pension of that description I well remember ; 
it suggests to me other considerations than those which such a 
list would naturally inspire — t mean the pension to the family 
of the late chief baron. — I moved for that pension; I did it from 
a natural and instinctive feeling : I came to this house from his 



324 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

hearse. What concern first suggested, reason afterwards con- 
firmed. Do I lament that pension ? Yes ; — because in it I la- 
ment the mortality of noble emulation — of delightful various en- 
dowments — and above all, because I feel the absence of 
him who, if now here, would have inspired this debate, would 
have asserted your privileges, exposed the false pretences of pre- 
rogative, and have added one angelic voice to the councils of the 
nation. 

" Having considered the pension list as a grievance, I shall now 
trouble you with some observations on the remedy, namely, the 
bill which my friend proposes on the spur of the present expense, 
grounding himself on the example of England. In opposition to 
this bill, some gentlemen of this house have come forth in the 
rusty armour of old prerogative, and have stated this attempt to 
reform abuses by bill, as an invasion of the sacred rights of the 
crown. — Sir, I apprehend that parliament may, and ought to 
remedy abuses, even though they are not in themselves illegal. 
On this principle it was that the judges' bill was passed ; on this 
principle the habeas corpus bill in Ireland was passed ; and on 
this principle many of the best laws in England have passed. 
Abuses which obtain under colour of law, are best rectified in 
parliament. 

" When the commons of England had returned to their house, 
from a decisive answer given by Charles I. to the petition of 
right, they began to consider the state of the nation in all the 
various management of the king's prerogative ; a message was 
delivered through the speaker, from the king, to admonish them 
not to cast reflections on his government, or to enter into the af- 
fairs of the state. Sir Edward Coke observed, on that message : 
" It is the business of this house to moderate the king's preroga- 
tive. Nothing which reacheth to abuse, that may not be treated 
of here." This principle is particularly applicable to cases of 
money, over which you, by special privilege, preside ; and still 
more applicable to cases of your own revenues, because they are 
appropriated. A right honourable member has contradicted 
this ; he says, that however the new customs and excise may be 
appropriated, yet that the old customs are under no appropria- 
tion whatsoever ; and he says further, that formerly the king 
had a right to them by common law ; and he states that they 
amount to 200,000/. per annum ; but the right honourable mem- 



ON PENSIONS. 325 

ber is not warranted, either by the laws or constitution of his 
country, in the doctrine which he has ventured to advance. — 
Charles I. thought, indeed, Hke the right honourable member, 
that the king was entitled to tonnage and poundage by common 
law ; but the parliament of England differed from both, and re- 
solved such levies to be illegal, and the persons who, thinking 
like the member, had been concerned therein, to be delinquents. 
Nay, the old customs to the king makes an exception ; and the 
quahfication of a grant in any degree, usually bespeaks the po- 
verty of the granter ; the member therefore seems not to have 
adverted sufficiently either to the statute law or the constitution 
of his country. The statute of Charles II. which grants the new 
customs, and which also the member does not appear entirely to 
understand, seems to consolidate the new and old customs, and 
appropriate both to one and the same purpose. — After reciting 
the old grant, and establishing a common book of rates, it says, — 
" And for the better guarding and defending of the seas," — and 
then it proceeds to grant the new customs : the words " better 
guarding and defending of the seas," bespeak the appropriation 
both to one and the same purpose, and is a term of connection 
between the old and new customs, making them a common fund 
for the defence of the seas. — But I might yield all this — I might 
allow that the hereditary revenue is not appropriated — that the 
act of customs does not mean the guarding the seas, nor the act 
of excise the pay of the army. Yet is the hereditary revenue 
the estate of the nation, of which the first magistrate is but a 
trustee for public purposes. It is not the private property of the 
king, but the public revenue, and any diversion thereof is a crime. 
The great Duke of Buckingham was impeached for such a crime ; 
one article of his impeachment was the grant of several pensions 
to himself and his friends out of the revenue, and one criminal 
pension in the schedule, was a charge on the old customs of Ire- 
land. At an earlier period the Duke of Suffolk was impeached, 
and one charge was the grant of pensions to himself and his friends. 
At an earlier period, in the reign of Richard II. an Earl of Ox- 
ford was impeached for grants to himself and his friends ; the 
crime is called interception of subsidy ; whereby the realm was 
left undefended, and grants like yours for the defence thereof, 
wasted on individuals, while the people were doubly taxed, as 
you are, to make up the wanton deficiency. 



326 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

" Thus does it appear, that in cases concerning pensions by- 
prerogative, the commons have interfered ; though prerogative 
in those cases might plead that the revenues out of which these 
grants arose, were wholly appropriated ; but a public grant ap- 
propriates itself to the public use ; and the parliament that pro- 
ceeds either to punish or control the diversion thereof, does not 
invade the prerogative of the crown, but exercises the privilege 
of the commons, in guarding the inheritance of the nation. In 
reforming such abuses, you may proceed in your inquisitorial ca- 
pacity, as the greatest inquest of the nation, by impeachment, or 
in your legislative capacity, by bill ; the latter is the milder me- 
thod — my friend adopts it ; and proceeds rather to reform than 
to punish. You tell him that we have submitted to this grievance 
for a long time. It is true ; but a course of toleration and im- 
punity, neither constitute innocence, nor draws out the sting of 
a grievance ; it is true, you have submitted to this grievance for 
a long time. Hence the many erroneous arguments of this night. 
The public inheritance has been so diverted to private pur- 
poses, by a series of ministers, that we have forgotten the pro- 
prietor in the misapplication of the property, and talk of the es- 
tate, as of the private patrimony of the king — Hence these pre- 
rogatives of rapine ! these rights of plunder ! the authority of the 
king to be robbed by his own servants of the common stock ! — 
Hence it is, that gentlemen have set up the shadow of preroga- 
tive as a centinel to public robbery. 

" When gentlemen call this bill an attack on the prerogative 
of the crown, they are answered by the principles of the consti- 
tution ; but they are also answered by a precedent of the most 
decisive nature ; and that precedent is this very bill, which is 
now the law of England. By the law of England, no pensioner 
for years, or during pleasure, can sit in parliament ; and by the 
law of England the amount of pensions is limited. The first law 
passed at the time of the Revolution, and was improved in the 
reign of queen Anne. The latter passed in 1782, with the entire 
concurrence of these very persons who now constitute this admi- 
nistration ; and yet the argument of prerogative would have been 
stronger in England, because there a civil list had been granted 
to the king, and the subsequent limitation of pensions on that list, 
seemed a revocation of the pow-ers of the grant. On what au- 
thority then, or pretence, do gentlemen call a measure which 



ON PENSIONS. 327 

they supported as necessary for England, an invasion of the rights 
of the crown, when proposed for the beneiit of Ireland ? What 
pretence have they for such partial doctrine of unequal measure? 
As if that was infringement in Ireland, which, in England was 
constitution ; or, as if what was moderation in the people of Eng- 
land, would be in those of Ireland, arrogance and presumption. 

*' This leads me to another objection, on which gentlemen 
much relied, that this bill is an innovation — a new constitution ; 
to admit the undue influence of the crown in parliament, and to 
control the excess of expense — an innovation ! It is an encroach- 
ment most certainly, an encroachment on corruption, an invasion 
on the ancient privileges of venality ; it is the old constitution en- 
croaching and innovating on long established dishonest practices 
and accumulating expenses. All these expenses and practices, 
it seems we have already sanctified ; we voted, the other night, 
that neither in their excess or application were they a grievance. 
Sir, I will not presume to censure a vote of this house, but I may 
be permitted to explain that vote ; we could not mean, by that 
vote, that the present pension list was no grievance, for there 
was no man in debate hardy enough to make such an assertion ; 
no man considers what that pension list is ; it is the prodigality, 
jobbing, misapplication, and corruption of every Irish minister 
since 1772. To say that such a list was not, either in its excess 
or application, a grievance, was to declare, that since that pe- 
riod (that is, above half a century,) all your ministers were im- 
maculate, or rather, indeed, that God had governed you himself, 
and had never sent you a minister in his anger. 

" I declare I could not afiirm the innocence of the list, because 
I should be guilty of affirming what I conceive to be false. Do 
gentlemen think otherwise ? — Let them take their catalogue in 
one hand, and place on their heart the other ; let them look this 
nation in the face, and in that posture declare, that the present 
Irish pension list is not, either in its excess or application, a griev- 
ance ! They could not do it ; they have voted what they would 
not say. I dissented from their vote, but I went along with their 
conviction." 

3S 



SPEECH OF MR. GRATTAN, 



NAVIGATION ACT. 



PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS. 

On the 5th of March, 1787, Mr. Grattan desired to be inform- 
ed what was meant by a bill, for which leave had been given the 
23d of last February, under the title of " A bill for the improve- 
ment of Navigation," and whether that bill was to go farther 
than the registry of ships. The Attorney-general (Mr, Fitzgib- 
bon) replied, that the intent was to insert a clause in the bill, 
declaratory of its being in force in this kingdom. " Then," said 
Mr. Grattan — " I find this bill is to enact the navigation law, a 
law of greatest anxiety to the British minister, a law intended to 
confer equal benefits, and impose equal restraints, but so con- 
sidered by Britain, as to confer benefits on herself and exclude Ire- 
land. This was a principle of the propositions, and a very old 
complaint — England sent plantation goods to Ireland, and refus- 
ed to receive them from us, under colour and construction of one 
and the same law — the act of navigation. This law, it seems 
now, gentlemen begin to suspect is not valid in Ireland, and it is 
now proposed by them to be enacted here, subject to the hostile 
construction ; and it is to be brought on, on Wednesday, to be 
passed, I suppose, with the usual expedition." 

On the 20th of March, the Attorney-general's new bill was de- 
bated ; on which occasion, Mr. Grattan moved an amendment, 
which, in his opinion, went completely and effectually to prevent 
any future misconstruction of the navigation act, whose original 
principle and object was equality of advantage to every part of 
the British empire. This celebrated act (which Blackstone de- 
scribes as the most beneficial statute for the trade and commerce 
of England) was first framed in the year of Cromwell, 1650, with 
a narrow partial view — being intended to mortify our Sugar 

328 



SPEECH ON THE NAVIGATION ACT. 329 

Islands, which were disaffected to the parliament, and still held 
out for Charles the IL, by stopping the gainful trades which they 
then carried on with the Dutch ; and, at the same time, to clip 
the wings of those our opulent and aspiring neighbours — this act 
prohibited all ships of foreign nations from trading with any Eng- 
lish plantations, without Uce?ise from the council of state. In 
1651, the prohibition was extended also to the mother country, 
and no goods were to be suffered to be imported into England, or 
any of its dependencies, in any other than English bottoms, or in 
the ships of that European nation, of which the merchandize im- 
ported was the genuine growth or manufacture ; at the restora- 
tion, the former provisions were continued, by statute 12 of 
Charles the IL, c. 18, with this very material improvement, that 
the master and three-fourths of the mariners shall also be English 
subjects. 

This act of navigation, so justly considered by Englishmen as 
the great cause of their commercial ascendancy over the rest of 
mankind, or as Sir Joseph Child describes it, — " The Charta Ma- 
ritima of England," — the creator and preserver of that navy 
which rides triumphant over every sea, and dictates British law 
in the remotest corners of the globe, had not yet become the law 
of Ireland. The jealousy which originally dictated this celebrat- 
ed act against the enemies of England, was directed against Ire- 
land with the same selfish spirit ; and the enlightened consider- 
ation of extending to the latter, all the advantages which flowed 
from this unprecedented monopoly to England, never occurred 
to those ministers, whose object should have been a community 
of interest and a free interchange of benefit with every part of 
the British empire. This act of navigation was a law of policy 
and power, rather than of commerce; — a martial policy was the 
object of those who gave birth to it ; and it appears, from an in- 
spection of the act, that its framers intended its operation should 
be general throughout the British empire. The broad and ex- 
panded views of Cromwell were defeated by the narrow and con- 
temptible cunning of commercial avarice : — for though the act 
of the 12th of Charles II., which is called the act of navigation, 
recognizes the principle of universal operation throughout the 
empire, yet, in three years after that period, the miserable policy 
of England converted it into a law of commercial restriction, by 
forbidding the direct import of the colony trade with Ireland. 
2t 



330 SPEECH ON THE 

Thus, the liberal construction, which, from the words of the 
act, and the circumstances under which it was enacted, under- 
went various alterations in many subsequent statutes. By the 
navigation act — plantation goods were exportable 07}lij from the 
plantations to England, Ireland, Wales, and Berwick ; but by a 
series of succeeding laws, (the 15th and 22d of Charles II. — the 
7th and 8th of William, and 4th of George II.) all plantation 
goods were prohibited to be landed, from the plantations in Ire- 
land, except a few articles, which escaped the enumeration in 
the act of George II. thus counteracting the original compre- 
hensive intention of the act of navigation. To put an end to the 
possibility of any future misconstruction of this famous statute, 
which Ireland was about to adopt as the law of the land, Mr 
Grattan proposed the following amendment, which goes to secure 
all the benefits of the act, on the principle of Irish equality. 

" And whereas, it is the meaning and intention of the said act, 
passed in England, in the 12th of king Charles II., to impose the 
same restraints, and confer equal bejiefits, on his majesty's subjects 
in England and in Ireland, and that both kingdoms shall be af- 
fected in the same manner." 

To this amendment it was objected by ministers, that the act 
of Charles II., the liberality of which was so much relied upon 
by Mr. Grattan, had no reference whatever to the transportation 
of colonial goods between England and Ireland ; — that the acts 
of customs, which was in force more than a century, regulated 
the trade — that it was impossible to force England to adopt a 
construction of the navigation act, different from that which we 
had hitherto obtained; that the act, as it stood, without the 
amendment, was a source of infinite advantage to Ireland; it 
gave to the latter a monopoly in favour of her shipping ; it gave 
her admission into the English ports, on the same terms as the 
English themselves — it gave her the protection of the British 
navy. 

To these objections, Mr. Grattan replied, with his accustomed 
force of argument, and brilliancy of illustration : 

" Sir — From the thin and unfrequented state of these benches, 
one would naturally expect no business of moment. The Navi- 
gation act, now under your consideration, has been, from the 
earliest time, an object to Great Britain ; for this she has incur- 



NAVIGATION ACT. 331 

red the jealousy of nations ; to this she attributes the growth of 
her marine — the dominion of the sea ; and she has called it, em- 
phatically, a Great Sea Charter. 

" But this act, dear as it was to her, has been in its operation 
as cruel to you ; — hardly had the act passed, when you were in- 
hibited, by one law, from sending European goods to the planta- 
tions. By another law your name was stricken out of the bond, 
and the plantations were inhibited from sending their articles to 
Ireland ; — and, finally, by another law, you were inhibited 
from sending plantation goods to Great Britain; wdiile England, 
who drew up your act of customs, (for the act of customs, 
though the measure of the Irish parliament, was drawn up in 
England,) forced herself into your market by a clause in that 
act. Here has been the construction or operation of the naviga- 
tion act ; a construction of monopoly and contradiction ; a tyran- 
ny of power over the rules of reason ; an operation of injustice, 
the result of which was, that Ireland w^as turned out of every 
market in the king's dominions, her own not excepted ; while 
England construed herself into the Irish market, by an authority 
derived from the explanation of one and the same act, by the 
interpretation of which you are excluded. Thus you stood, or 
nearly thus, until the settlement of 1779 ; here the two nations 
came to an honourable explanation, in which the characters 
of both were raised, and in which, coupled with the settlement 
of 1782, their animosities were buried for ever; but in the set- 
tlement of 1779, we did not comprehend the channel trade, or 
the trade subsisting between Great Britain and Ireland, that 
stood on its ancient base, which was in equality ; here the dregs 
of the provincial system remained not yet purged off; you took 
the manufacture of England, and the plantation goods re-exported 
from England, and England refused to take either from Ireland. 
She got the raw article from you, and you take the manufacture 
from her. — It was a condition that required arrangement, but 
was not a condition (considering the great and recent acquisitions 
of this country) that should have called forth the very great tur- 
bulence and impatience which attended the inauspicious discussion 
of the unhappy question — protecting duties ! to which the above 
condition had given birth — protecting duties! — a question whether 
we should turn a vast number of articles of the English manufac- 
tures out of the Irish market, a question taken up so improperly, 



332 SPEECH ON THE 

so furiously agitated, and so suspiciously deserted. The madness 
of the times frightened the English much, but frightened every 
rational man in Ireland much more, and did at last damn the 
pretensions of those manufacturers who had just force enough to 
give birth to an arrangement, of which protecting duties not only 
did not make a part, but in which an express stipulation against 
them made a principal part. The equality of the re-export 
trade made another part. This was the system of reciprocity, 
but the manufacturers of England trembled at it; they had got 
your market already, they, therefore, were not to gain any thing 
by the experiment, and they were, therefore, left free to indulge 
in the latitude of their ancient fears and airy speculations. They 
contemplated the low price of labour and of provisions in Ire- 
land ; — they mistook the symptoms of poverty for the seeds of 
wealth ; — in your raggedness they saw riches in disguise ; and in 
destitution itself, they discovered a powerful rival to the capital, 
credit, and commerce of Great Britain. 

" Whilst your pretensions were thus opposed by some of the 
English manufacturers, jealous of your poverty, they were also 
combated by another party, jealous of your liberty. The rem- 
nant of lord North's ministry, who had supported the minister in 
the fury of the American measures, but had condemned his de- 
cline, and saw the moment when a great man loses his virtues, 
that is, when he loses his power — that remnant who had but one 
idea with respect to Great Britain, Ireland, and America — coer- 
cion — coercion ! From that quarter, the fourth proposition, if I 
am well informed, and some of the other propositions, the result 
of a narrow mind, a sordid circumspection, and a jealousy of the 
dominating genius of an individual, and of the liberties of a na- 
tion, originated. Thus was Mr. Pitt's system of reciprocity 
clogged with a system of coercion, and thus fell the adjustment ; 
and since that time we have no question in the least connected 
with it, until a doubt has been entertained of the validity of the 
act of navigation. The doubt rests on two points ; one is, the 
informal and narrow rule in the act of customs, which enacts 
nothing, speaks only to the lower officers of the revenue, and 
rather indicates a false opinion of the validity of the act of navi- 
gation in Ireland, by the authority of the British parliament, 
rather than a legislative confirmation of the law. Let the learned 
decide — I know there are some most eminent lawyers, who do not 



NAVIGATION ACT. 333 

think that rule sufficient to establish the act of navigation in 
point of law ; — in point of conformity it has not been disputed. 
The other ground of doubt is Mr, Yelverton's bill ; the clause in 
this bill is equality ; it enacts such commercial and navigation 
laws, as import to confer the same benefits, and impose the same 
restrictions. Had the navigation act been unaltered, had it not 
been perverted from its original purpose, it would have been 
established by Mr. Yelverton's bill ; but its inequality of opera- 
tion stood in the way of its confirmation. Thus, the doubt of the 
validity of the act of navigation arose ; the narrowness of the 
rule, and the honest latitude of the bill. In these circumstances 
a bill is introduced to establish in this country the act of naviga- 
tion. I was not under error in any degree whatever with re- 
spect to the measure. I stated it to be the establishment of the 
act of navigation ; it is so. It has been called a bill for the trade 
of Ireland ; it is not so. It has been represented as a boon from 
England ; it is not so. 

" The act of navigation is an act of empire, not of commerce ; 
Cromwell was no merchant; his mind was compass, power, and 
empire. — The navigation act is a restriction on commerce in the 
benefit of shipping — a restriction on the sale of things imported 
and exported — confining the sale and purchase to vessels and 
ports of a certain description. The compensation Great Britain 
receives, is in the carrying trade ; and a doubt has arisen, 
whether the benefits she receives from that trade, compensate 
for the restraint she imposes on the sale of the commodity ; but 
as to Ireland, there can be no doubt at all. The act of naviga- 
tion is clearly a restriction without the compensation. Your 
trade does not receive benefit from the alien duty. The act is a 
clog on your plantation, and a clog on your European trade. — 
Does your trade receive benefit by being confined to vessels of a 
certain description, or a certain port ? You incur the restraint 
on the sale, but you do not get compensation. See your tonnage 
of 1784 : English in the Irish trade 360,000; Irish 71,000; thus 
the act of navigation is a restriction on commerce for shipping ; 
a restriction on Irish commerce for British shipping ; therefore 
the Act of Navigation is a grant to England. 

" I do not hesitate to make that grant, nor do I require to be 
exhorted to make that grant, by a suggestion, that an act of re- 
striction on our commerce is for the benefit of our trade. I know 



334 SPEECH ON THE 

we must make some sacrifices, in some instances, to the general 
cause. I know taxes are not commercial benefits any more than 
acts of navigation ; but they are necessary, and therefore I do not 
hesitate to conform to the British act ; desiring only, in order to 
warrant that conformity, that the conditions of the act may be 
effectually equal. As Irish conformity is necessary to the British 
empire, so is Irish equality necessary to obtain that conformity ; 
that is the true principle that connects ; it is the breath that 
lifts, it is the spirit that moves, and the soul that actuates ; with- 
out it all is eccentricity — with it the two nations gravitate to a 
common centre, and fulfil their stated revolutions in the imperial 
orbit, by rules, regular as the laws of motion ; like them infallible, 
and like them everlasting ! Nor do you here demand an equaUty 
of which you are not a purchaser ; you purchased the right to 
equal admission, or equal exclusion, under this act, by a long 
conformity to its restriction ; you have given to Great Britain, for 
that equality, your carrying trade and your market — 100,000/. 
in plantation goods — 360,000 tonnage — nor do you, in fact, desire 
equal advantages. You do not desire the British market ; but 
you wish to have the speculation of the British market for the 
chance of your own ; it is not another man's estate you desire, 
but a small channel through your neighbour's land, that you may 
water your own, vi^ithout the fear of inundation. The Enghsh 
need not tremble; their estates in the plantations articled to 
render the produce to Great Britain, will not break those articles. 
Cork will not be the emporium of the empire. Old England will 
remain at the head of things. — We only aspire that the little 
bark of this Island may attendant sail — pursue the triumph, and 
perchance partake some vagrant breath of all those trade- winds 
that waft the British empire along the tide of commerce. 

" The equality we ask, is not only the birth of our condition — 
it is the dictate of our laws — see the act of 1782 — the same 
benefits and the same restraints — a principle very inadequate, if 
applied, as the rule whereby to measure laws not yet in existence ; 
very infirm ground whereon to pledge the faith of parliament to 
future adoption, but necessary for your conformity to any English 
act already in existence — a principle of equality is thus registered 
in your own statutes. The merchants who petitioned, were 
therefore moderate ; they are men respectable as merchants, as 
men of sense, and men of probity — they did not desire you to re- 



NAVIGATION ACT. 335 

peal the navigation act, but tliey did desire that you would not 
re-enact it ; that you would not give any new sanction or au- 
thority to the act, without establishing and securing its benefits. 
They spoke, like freemen, the suggestion of the laws, and de- 
manded their right — equity, effectual equity. They spoke a 
principle admitted even by the two houses of the British parlia- 
ment, at a time not very favourable to your liberty ; the time of 
the propositions. The fourth proposition, inadmissible as it was, 
did not presume to ask of you to adopt English laws of shipping 
and navigation, on a principle other than that of equality. That 
proposition was idle enough to expect that you should pledge your 
faith to a future conformity to future English acts : but equality 
even there was admitted — even by that oppressive narrow propo- 
sition : therefore I think I have proved, that in the act under 
your consideration you have a right to demand equality, and I 
ask whether the clause sufficiently secures it ? The clause re- 
cites the rule, and then enacts, and explains nothing — recites no 
principle, secures no principle, removes no doubt ; it leaves you a 
verbal, not an operative equality; equality of law, but not 
equality of construction. In support of a clause so circumstanced, 
two principal arguments have been adduced ; one, that the act 
of navigation is the law already, and the other, that it is not. As 
to the first, if the whole of the argument rested here, the argu- 
ment and the bill would be easily disposed of. — 'Tis true, the act 
of navigation has been complied with ; the merchants, commis- 
sioners, and people, have obeyed it ; the doubt must arise some- 
where out of this country ; and if out of this country, in some 
quarter appertaining to the British court ; it is therefore a propo- 
sition from the British court to the Irish nation. When we are 
employed in discussing this proposition, and in removing the doubt 
the court of Britain may entertain about the existence of the act 
of navigation, have we forgotten that there does not exist a much 
more respectable and more interesting doubt about its construc- 
tion ? and shall we gratify the court by settling the one point, 
and not gratify, serve, and secure the people, by settling and se- 
curing the other ? 

" The other argument, that tells you the navigation act is not 
the law, desires you with all speed to establish it, in order to se- 
cure your plantation trade. But has any court of justice im- 
peached the validity of the act? Any merchant disputed it? 
3T 



336 SPEECH ON THE 

Any commissioner dispensed with it ? There is the same con 
formity to the act of navigation now, which obtained in 1780, 
when we got the plantation trade ; therefore, we are not called on 
to re-enact it by virtue of the covenant. Supposing that settle- 
ment to have the navigation act in contemplation, the plantation 
trade is confined to the British plantation, and the navigation act 
is co-extensive with the world ; there is therefore a geographical 
error in the argument, supposing it to have any foundation in the 
fact ; — but to put this defiance to issue — I ask the right honour- 
able gentlemen on the other side, have they any authority from 
the British minister, to tell Ireland, that unless she shall re-enact 
the navigation law, England will repeal the settlement of 1780? 
I wait for an answer: there is no such thing. 

" The plantation trade is out of the question. I congratulate 
you ; your minds are at ease ; that fear is idle. But if you were 
to examine the value of that trade, with the loss of which you 
are threatened, perhaps you would find that it is not inestimable. 
I allow it is of some value ; I do not wish to depreciate the grants 
of England ; you do import directly and you do export directly 
something, but not in any very great quantity. Whence do you 
get your sugar ? From old England what bales of cotton manu- 
facture or woollen manufacture have you exported directly to the 
plantations 1 Have we forgotten what we have heard on the 
subject of the propositions, that our plantation trade did not de- 
pend on the act of navigation, but on the issue of the second 
market, that is, on the equal operation of the navigation act, of 
the act before you ? I thought gentlemen went too far when 
they talked down the plantation trade, as it were nothing with- 
out the market of England, without this point of construction or 
operation ; but I am astonished that they now urge the planta- 
tion trade as an argument for adopting the act of navigation, 
without taking the precaution of securing that equality under 
the act, without which, the plantation trade, in their opinion, is 
inoperative. One gentleman says it is law, another it is not law ; 
but both agree to prepossess your judgment, by exciting a false 
indifference or a false panic. There is another argument that 
comes in aid of these, which tells you, it is of no consequence 
whether the navigation act is or is not law ; because the inequality 
arises from two out-standing acts of parliament ; one the act of 
customs in Ireland, which admits British plantation goods : the 



NAVIGATION ACT. 337 

other the act of the twelfth of George III. in England, which pro- 
hibits their import from this country ; and therefore he advises you 
to adopt the act of navigation, because there are two other acts of 
parliament which deprive you of its benefits. Before you pass the 
clause under consideration, recollect that we have not very indi- 
rectly been invited to institute an adjustment with great Britain. 
I am against advancing on that subject ; I do not wish to make 
new points with England ; there are some things might be better 
adjusted, but I would leave that adjustment to temper and to time. 
England now receives France and excludes Ireland. I do not 
believe she need be afraid of being rivalled by either ; but this 
is a consideration for her and not for us ; we have done our part ; 
we have opened our market to England ; we cannot give our 
constitution if she chooses to advance ; if, ashamed to give privi- 
leges to France which she refuses to Ireland, she wishes to relax, 
'tis well ; we are ready to thank her ; but if the court wishes to 
advance, and proposes the removal of a new doubt, by adopting 
a new and experimental measure, such as the present, we must 
assert, we reply, by establishing an old claim and an old principle. 
My answer to this proposition is to take the act of navigation on 
its true principle; and my sentiments are, Irish equality, and 
British shipping ; and my amendment is as follows — and my vote 
shall be for the amendment and for the bill, for the English navi- 
gation act on its own principle." 

He concluded with moving the following amendment to the 
preamble of the Act : 

" Ajid whereas it is the meaning and intention of the said act, 
passed iii England in the twelfth year of ki?ig Charles II., to impose 
the same restrai?its and to confer equal benefits on his majesty'' s sub- 
jects in England and in Ireland, and that both kingdoms shall be 
thereby affected in the same manner.'''' 

To put the house in possession of the whole measure, he stated 
that he intended to follow the amendment, by moving the an- 
nexed proviso for the Bill : 

" Provided, that the said act, passed in Efigland, in the txoelfth 
year of the reign of Charles II., shall bind his majesty's subjects of 
Ireland, so long as it shall have the effect of conferring the same bene- 
fits, and imposing the sam£ restrictions, on both kingdoms." 

2u 



SPEECH OF MR. GRATTAN, 



DEBATE ON TITHES. 



PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS. 

It will not, perhaps, be considered by the readers of this vo- 
lume an unnecessary, or an unimportant inquiry, to give a short 
history of that system which has been so long, and with so much 
justice, condemned as one of the most fruitful sources of discontent 
and disaffection, among the lower classes of the people of Ireland ; 
nor will it contribute a little to the proper understanding of the 
merits, and to the due appreciation of the great talents which 
are displayed in those speeches which were pronounced by Mr. 
Grattan, in the years 1787, 1788, and 89 ; when the south and 
west of Ireland were distracted by a furious and barbarous asso- 
ciation of persons, under the denomination of whiteboys, whose 
cruelties and outrages could only be accounted for, by the melan- 
choly reflection, that they seemed to have no resource but in the 
madness of despair — no prospect or hope of redress, but in the 
wild and senseless devastation of the property of those whom 
they considered their oppressors. Those who read the proceed- 
ings of the Irish parliament, at this memorable and afflicting pe- 
riod, will be surprised, perhaps, that a legislature, composed of 
men, whose interests should have been the peace and happiness 
of their poor and oppressed countrymen, could discover no 
remedy for public grievance but the severest penalties of vindic- 
tive law ; and that it should refuse inquiry into those complaints, 
which every dispassionate man in the kingdom acknowledges to 
have arisen from the greatest injustice ever practised on the 
poor of any country. He, whose heart was not closed by the 
seductions of interest, or whose existence did not depend on his 
venality, and the prostitution of his voice to the purposes of a 

338 



SPEECH IN THE DEBATE ON TITHES. 339 

corrupt cabinet, saw, with pain and with indignation, the ex- 
ercise of an unlimited and undefined power, in the hands of the 
meanest, the lowest, and most inexorable tyrants — the tithe- 
proctors and tithe-farmers of Ireland ; a set of men, unfeeling, 
uneducated, and unprincipled, placed between the rector and the 
farmer, for tlie purpose of shielding the former from the odium 
of levying a tax, as difficult as unpleasant in the collection, and 
operating, in the majority of instances, as an intolerable griev- 
ance, and the fountain of bitterness and distress to the humble 
and industrious inhabitant of the cabin. That a protestant go- 
vernment, zealous for the propagation of its religion and its prin- 
ciples ; that a protestant church, anxious for extending the foun- 
dation of its establishment and the conversion of its people ; that 
a church, which labours, through the medium of charter schools, 
and the prodigal dissemination of prayer books through the land, 
to diffuse a liberal and enlightened religion, among a people whom 
it has often been pleased to represent and stigmatize as barba- 
rous and uncivilized — should have persevered in a system so well 
calculated to render that religion odious ; that it should have per- 
severed in a system, which exposed the ministers of the protestant 
religion to a comparison with the meek, the humble, and pro- 
tecting ministers of the catholic church ; the former, from the 
cruel and relentless necessity of circumstances, obliged to goad 
and torment the miserable peasant, with all the chicanery, and 
cunning, and artifice of his tithe-proctor; while the catholic 
priest was ever to be seen administering to his mind, healing the 
wounds which oppression had inflicted, and preaching comfort 
and peace to the heart, which injustice, in her most odious form, 
had wrung. That the government of Ireland, but more particu- 
larly that the landed property of the kingdom, should close the 
doors of parliament against those men, who come forward to give 
evidence of the miseries and sufferings, which had goaded their 
fellow countrymen into acts of turbulence, and tumult, and vio- 
lence, unparalleled in any other part of the civilized world. That 
all this should be done, under the mockery of protecting the 
church and the state against desperate innovation, and wild ex- 
periment, will 710 longer be a subject of wonder to those who have 
witnessed the close of that disgraceful scene, which terminated 
in the extinction of the liberties of Ireland. In 1788, Mr. Grat- 
tan, the advocate of the people, the undaunted and unanswerable 



340 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

champion of public justice and public mercy, was represented 
by the hirelings of the castle, and the pastors of the church, as a 
conspirator against the peace and prosperity of his native land, 
and the existence of the established church. He was honoured 
with the titles of " factious agitator" — " turbulent demagogue," 
and all that miserable series of scurrility, which a prostitute and 
abandoned press could give birth to. That eloquence which fas- 
cinated the enemies of Ireland, while it denounced their corrup- 
tion, their follies, and their crimes ; that truth and courage, which 
convinced the reasonable, and dismayed the trading politician, 
were industriously slandered by the daily preachers of Christian 
charity, and the hypocritical defenders of the purity and stability 
of the protestant church. The curtain is now drawn up, and 
the minister who has completed the conquest of Ireland, has 
more than vifidicated the great and glorious eflforts of Mr. Grat- 
tan in her defence. He cautioned the people of Ireland against 
that minister, in a loud and prophetic voice, and they were deaf 
to his remonstrances ; he cautioned the country gentlemen (whose 
confidence Mr. Grattan ought to have possessed) against the folly 
and the fury of their laws, and the snare they were artlessly 
weaving for the liberty and character of their country. Mr. 
Grattan made his eloquent appeals in vain ; the idle and stupid 
pride of 7iof yielding to the clamours, and the tumults, and the 
violence of the people, was mistaken for manly firmness and dig- 
nified determination. The Irish parliament preferred a code of 
pains and penalties, to acts of mercy and redress ! it preferred 
destroying and extinguishing the peasant, to an inquiry into his 
complaints ; and after thus unnerving the arm of the people ; 
after thus crushing their spirit to the earth, and stifling their 
cries, that same parliament stupidly called on their countrymen, 
in 1800, to protect them against the minister of England; they 
trembled for their darling ascendancy, and crouched to those 
honest feelings of Ireland, on which, for many years, they had 
been trampling. In 1800 it was not surprising, therefore, to see 
the people reluctant to take up arms, for the protection of that 
monopoly which governed them, and to perpetuate that tyranny, 
which, with a thousand heads, rioted on their comforts, their 
peace, and their feelings. — The short sketch of the history of 
tithes in Ireland, which we shall now give, will best demonstrate 
the truth of the foregoing observations. 



ON TITHES. 341 

According to the testimony of Spencer, tithes, in Ireland, were 
of no great vakie, for a length of time after the reformation; in 
his state of Ireland, he writes, " All the Irish priests, who now 
enjoy church livings in Ireland, are mere laymen ; live like lay- 
men, iind follozo all kinds of husbandry, and other worldly affairs." 
And elsewhere, he observes, " That the benefices are so mean, 
and of so small profit in those Irish countries, through the ill hus- 
bandry of the natives, they will not yield any competent main- 
tenance for any honest minister to live upon." Primate Boulter, 
(whose administration commenced in 1724, and ended about 1742.) 
in a letter to Sir Robert Walpole, thus writes : " Since the refor- 
mation, while the lands were mostly in popish hands, the clergy 
took what they could get, tha?ikfully ; and very few went near 
their livings to their duty." In this state things remained until 
the revolution, or rather until the surrender of Limerick to king 
William, threw all the benefices into the hands of protestant rec- 
tors : at this period, peace was, in a great measure, restored to 
Ireland, and the clergy began by degrees to re-assume those 
rights which were heretofore disputed. In the year 1720, they 
demanded (as we are informed by bishop Boulter,) the tithes of 
Agistment,* which being resisted by the landholders of Ireland, an 
application was made to the court of exchequer, who determined 
that the clergy were entitled, by law, to the tithe of Agistment. 
The resistance which was made to the payment of this tithe, in 
the year 1734, by the country gentlemen of Ireland, should have 
taught their successors, in the years 1786 and '7, some moderation, 
and should have inspired them with some sensibility for the suf- 
ferings of the peasantry, whose conduct was ?iot more reprehen- 
sible, nor more illegal, than that of the landed proprietors, in re- 
sisting the tithe of Agistment ; — this example, before the eyes of 
an ignorant and unthinking multitude, (which, from the success 
that followed the efforts of the landed proprietors in 1735, was 
peculiarly calculated to animate and encourage the peasantry to 
imitation,) should have been taken into account by those legisla- 
tors, who, while they consigned to death and to ignominy the poor- 
est people of the country, persevered in withholding from the cler- 
gy those rights, which, by law, they were entitled to — by refusing 
to pay the tithe of Agistment; which, if paid, might have removed 

* It was resolved by the Irish parliament, that the tithe of Agistment was oppresr 
sive to the great landholders, and injurious to the protestant interests. 



342 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

much of the pressure of the church from the shoulders of the 
peasant, and thus diminish an evil which came with accumu- 
lated weight on those, who, of all others in the community, were 
the least able to bear it. 

Of the conduct of those landholders. Primate Boulter gives the 
following account : — he states " That associations were entered 
into by most of the lay lords and commoners, to join against agist- 
ment ; and the like associations were sent down to most counties 
against the assizes, and signed in most though refused in some — 
and a common purse was to be raised in each county to support 
any one there that should be sued for agistment : — there was, he 
writes, a rage stirred up against the clergy, that equalled any 
thing that had been seen against the Popish priests in the most 
dangerous times, though the clergy behaved themselves with a 
temper that surprised their enemies." The reader will bear in 
mind, that the persons most interested in refusing the tithe of 
agistment, were, the great graziers and Protestant proprietors of 
land ; men who, possessing great interest, directly and indirectly, 
in the house of commons, succeeded in deterring the clergy from 
making, and the courts of justice from entertaining, any demands 
from this tithe, though no legislative act for its abolition passed 
until the year 1800 ; — thus were the pasture lands of Ireland 
exempted from the payment of tithe, and the rector, and his 
proctor or tithe-farmer, were turned on the garden of the Catholic 
cottager, while the Protestayit landholder of a thousand acres of 
pasture was exonerated. Will the reader of Irish history any 
longer wonder at the enormities into which such monstrous injus- 
tice precipitated the ardent feelings of a people, than whom (Sir 
John Davis says,) " no men under heaven liked equal and indif- 
ferent justice better." 

" This conduct of the landholders, backed by the legislature, 
compelled the protestant clergy to increase their demands on the 
farmer and the cottager — every article which the latter possessed 
paid the grievous and unjust tax of tithes, and the murmurs of 
the people increased with the exactions and the necessities of the 
clergy. At this period, namely, 1735, it is to be remarked, (ac- 
cording to Bishop Boulter,) not a fortieth part of the land of Ire- 
land was under tillage — what a blow then to the agriculture — 
the population, and the comforts of the people must have been 
the exemption o( pasture lands from the payment of tithe — ruin- 



ON TITHES. 843 

ous to the character and independence of the protestant clergy, 
and torturing to the miserable peasant, who saw his children 
denied the necessaries of life, while the rich, overgrown, pr6test- 
ant landholder, was trampling on the laws of his country, and the 
interests of religion. Tithe-proctors necessarily multiphed — the 
rector, anxious to be shielded from the odium of the people, con- 
cealed himself under his proctor, and choosing between the alter- 
native of circumscribing the luxuries of his own family, or hmiting 
the necessaries of that of the peasant, he gave up the latter to 
all the cruelties of exaction, and all the goadings of injustice, — 
though pressed down by the inexorable cruelty of the laws — 
laws, which the Protestant, for the sake of his character and his 
religion, should be given up by him to the vengeance of the 
common executioner — which blot and blacken the pages of our 
liistory — which make the last century a horrid interval of dark- 
ness, during which death, in the robes of law and the ermine of 
justice, went through the land, with the sword in one hand, and 
the statute-book in the other, laying waste the finest and richest 
energies of our country — trampling down both mind and body, 
while our legislators, like so many drunken maniacs, rioted in the 
portico of this great national prison, and as our immortal Curran 
elegantly and truly said, " thinking themselves free when they had 
locked up their prisoners in their cells."— From the year 1735, 
when the Irish house of commons passed the infamous vote rela- 
tive to agistment, until 1760, the poor people of Ireland bore 
their grievances in silence and in sadness ; murmuring discon- 
tents, \v\iic\i if expressed would have been called " treason, faction, 
rebellion, sedition," by those very men who, to complete their 
own purposes, set the example of all. Those discontents were no 
longer suppressed ; a variety of causes contributed to fan the 
spark, which was so long smothered, into a flame, which desola- 
.ted the finest portion of our country ; which continues year affer 
year to make its destructive progress, and which the wisest 
statesmen England ever saw, have acknowledged to be the 
greatest evil this or any other country can labour under.- In the 
year 1760, an epidemic disease raged among the cattle through- 
out' the greater part of Europe ; it originated in Holland ; the 
mortality was so great, that an immediate rise took place in the 
value of lands in Ireland; the price of cattle rose in proportion, 
and every acre of ground, which the grazier could reach, he con- 
3U 



344 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

verted into pasture ; the husbandman was forced either to resign 
his farm or to hold it at an extravagant rack-rent. Added to this 
excessive rent, he had to pay his tithe— and at a period when 
the price of labour was miserably low. Will it be considered 
surprising by the protestant reader, that the catholic peasant 
should grumble at paying a tenth of his produce to a clergyman 
of another persuasion, when the rich protestartt grazier was not 
bound to pay 07ie farthing. 

What was the consequence 1 The poor people of the south 
rose in arms, and endeavoured to obtain by force arid violence, 
that relief which a protecting legislature, ought to have adminis- 
tered. Arthur Young, an Englishman, equally remarkable for 
the- wisdom of his observations, as the benignity and impartiality 
of his views, looking at Ireland, with the eye of an honest politi- 
cian—pointing out the high road to fair dealing and integrity — 
thus writes :■■ — " Those tithe farmers are a bad sort of people- 
very civil to gentlemen, but exceedingly cruel to the poor ; the 
great power of the protestant gentleman rendering his composition 
very light, while thepoor catholic was made, in too many cases, 
to pay severely for the deficiency of his betters." What will an 
English reader say to this statement of Mi'. Young 1 — Will he ex- 
claim against the barbarism of Ireland, when he reads her ex- 
cesses and her oiitra,ges, and takes into consideration the provo- 
cation which drove her to the committal of them ? — The Irish 
parliament were not idle during those scenes of civil war and 
convulsion ; the atrocities of the White boys, and the sanguinary 
violence of the laws, kept an equal pace, and frequently the 
murdereV and the midnight plunderer found refuge in the more 
malignant cruelty of the law. Acts of parliament now passed 
(said the same Mr. Arthur Young) which seemed calculated for 
the meridian of Barbary ; and this arose to such an height, that 
by one they were to be hanged without the common formalities 
of a trial, which, though repealed the following sessions, marks 
the character and spirit of punishment ; while others yet remain 
the law of the land, that would, if executed, tend more to raise 
than quell an insurrection ; from all which (he goes on) it is 
manifest, the gentlemen of Ireland never thought of a radical 
cure, from overlooking the real cajise, which, in fact, lay in them- 
selves, and not in the wretches they doomed to the gallows. Not- 
withstanding those violent remedies — in the teeth of those furious 



ON TITHES. . 345 

and vindictive laws, the country continued to be disturbed for the 
space of ten years ; and at tlie termination of this period those 
disturbances ceased, as Mr. Arthur Young remarks, "Because 
a very considerable fall in the price of lands contributed much to 
abate them, and lessened the evil of hiring farms over the heads 
of one another." In 1784, the flame of popular .tumult again 
burst forth, owing to the extraord'manj foil in the value of lands 
after the American war; — the fall operating on the occupying 
tenant as grievously as the former rise in 1760 ; — the people 
were equally loud in their complaints against tithes, and tithe- 
proctors, and were often heard to declare', that they would bear 
with znllitigficss the exactions of the middle man, if relieved from 
the more unjust, and consequently more corrosive impositions of 
the proctor. 

We have now arrived at that" period when Mr. Grattan took 
up the cause of a suffering pebple, with a heart full of sympathy 
for the miseries and wretchedness of an oppressed peasantry. 
Eminently susceptible of all the finest feelings of our nature f — 
with a mind stored with the treasures of classic literature ;^n- 
vigorated by the strength, apd refined by the genius of ancient 
days; — with an eloquence of no common stamp, full, compre- 
hensive, animating, and energetic ; on a subject of national griev- 
ance irresistible ; with an industry seldom the companion of such 
extraordinary powers, and an imagination capable of fascinat- 
ing the dullest audience, he came forward to plead the cause 
of the poor of Ireland against the wiles of the castle — the corrup- 
tion of the treasury, the hypocrisy of the priesthood, and the deep 
and mortal hatred of the English cabinet. It has been said, by 
those who witnessed this great man's exertions in the years 1787, 
'88, and '89, that the readers of his speeches can have but an 
humble idea of the enthusiasnl they produced among his au- 
dience. Though burning under the rays of corruption, they often 
felt the influence of native talent, genius, and integrity. Though 
menaced by the rebuke of the secretary, they have often involun- 
tarily poured praise on the head, which they would afterwards 
have sacrificed to the vengeance of a vanquished governnient. In 
those contests Mr. Grattan was opposed by every person, and 
every formidable engine of the state. The crown lawyers, with 
the late lord Clare, who, in the years 1787 and '88 was Attorney- 
general, were arrayed against him, and, like Sampson, his strength 
2x 



346 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

was only called forth by the number of his enemies. Mr. Grat- 
tan, 'however, whose spirit is not inclined to bend, or surrender to 
official petulance, or the ranting and swagger of government 
bullies, was 9wt to be deterred — he was ?ioi to be put down. His 
talents commanded attention, and the treasury, with millions at 
their back, could scarcely purchase a sigh of praise, when Mr. 
Grattan poured forth the treasures of his exhaustless understand- 
ing. He has left on record the finest specimens of eloquence in 
the English language, and has given to Irishmen (if Irishmen shall 
ever see the resurrection of their country) the finest models of 
senatorial virtue, indefatigable industry, and exalted powers. 

The reader of the following speeches on the subject of tithes, 
while he is charmed by the effusions of a chastened and sublime 
imagination, will smile at the absurdity and the weakness of the 
arguments which Mr. Grattan was obliged to combat — of which 
time has proved the folly, and the present degradation of Ireland 
has established the iniquity. When he looks over the report of 
the Irish house of commons, in 1799, and the report of the 
secret committee of the house of lords, in the same year, he will 
then see the predictions of Mr. Grattan most fully verified ; the 
integrity of his great and enlarged views in 1788, confirmed ; 
and the sophistry and hypocrisy of his antagonists unmasked. He 
will see the same lord Clare, who defended the system of tithes 
in 1788— who then contended, with an asperity, a petulance, 
and a boldness, worthy of the office he then filled, that tithes 
were not a grievance— that they were not oppressive — he will 
see eveti that noble lord obliged to admit, in 1799, that this very 
same system of tithes was the grand impulse to rebellion : the 
powerful instrument, in the hands of Messrs. O'Connor, . Emimet, 
and M'Nevin, to organize insurrection, and influence the pea- 
santry. 

Mr. Thomas Addis Emmet, when brought to the bar of the 
house of lords, in 1798, being asked, "What grievances his re- 
formed legislation would remove ?" answered, " In the first place, 
(said Mr. Emmet) it would cause a complete abohtion of tithes." 

Lord Clare put the following quere to Mr. Emmet. " Pray, 
Mr. Emmet, do you think catholic emancipation and parliament- 
ary reform any objects with the common people ?" Answer. " As 
to catholic emancipation, I don't think it matters a. feather, or 
that the poor think of it : as to parliamentary reform, I don't 



ON TITHES. 347 

think the common people ever thought of it, until it was incul- 
cated to them, that a reform in parliament would cause a remo- 
val of those grievances which they actually do feel." 

In the examination of Messrs. O'Connor, Emmet, and M'Nevin, 
the reader will observe the most singular corroboration of every 
argument advanced by Mr. Grattan in the following speeches. 
When Mr. Emmet (whose character for truth and talent stood 
eminejithj high in Ireland) was asked by lord Clare, " If his inten- 
tion and that of the conspirators was not to overturn the church?" 
" Pardon me, my lord," said Mr. Emmet, " my intention never 
was to destroy the church; my wish was to overturn the esta- 
blishnient." 

To another question put by Mr. Foster, in the house of com- 
mons, Mr. Emmet answered, with that sincerity which marked 
his character, and that accuracy which distinguished his mind. 
Mr. Foster. — " Do you think, Mr. Emmet, the catholics peculiarly 
object to tithes'?" — Mr. Emmet. — "They certainly have the 
best reason to complain! but I rather think they object more as 
tena?its than as catholics, asd in common with the rest of the 
tenantry of the kingdom ; and if any other way of paying even 
a protestant establishment, which did not bear so sensibly upon 
their industry, were to take place, I believe it would go a great 
■way to co?itent them." 

Let the reader of Mr. Grattan's opinions in 1788, mark the 
answer of Doctor M'Nevin, another leader in the rebellion of 
1798. When this gentleman was asked, whether Mr. Grattan's 
motion about Tithes, was not a short cut towards putting down 
the established church ? He replied, " that if the stability of the 
established church depends on the payment of tithes, the church 
stands on a weaker foundation than in civility I would have said 
of it ; hut of this, I am sure, that if tithes had been" commuted, 
according to Mr. Grattan's plan, a very povSerful engine would. have 
been taken out of our ha7ids." 

Should the readers of the following speeches, require more 
evidence to convince them of the wisdom and integrity of the 
principles they contain, I would refer them to the opinions of 
Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox : to those of my lord Grenville, and all 
those eminent statesmen, who, with Dano?/s views,- have repre- 
sented the tithe system of Ireland, one. of the most grievous and 
oppressive of which the population of any country have to com- 



348 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

plain — that some remedy should be applied to so calamitous a 
disease — that the bleeding wounds of our poor should be healed 
by the lenient hand of administration — that the physical strength 
of Ireland should be conciliated,. at least hy a dispositio7i, on the 
part of its rulers, to lessen its -vexations; and diminish its most 
painful privations, will be admitted by every true friend to the 
peace and the security of the. British empire. From an atten- 
tive perusal of the following pages, the young statesman will de- 
rive much information ; tiie industry he will there see exhibited, 
may animate him to honourable imitation ; and the genius and 
integrity with which the cause of the poor is pleaded, may light up 
in his breast that spark of feeling for the sufferings of Irishmen, 
which foreign habits, and foreign connections, and foreign sym- 
pathies, might haye otherwise extinguished. 

On Saturday, the 10th of March,. 1787, Mr. Grattan gave no- 
tice, that he would, on the following Tuesday j bring on the sub- 
ject of Tithes, in order to take the sense of the country gentle- 
men, whether any, and what regulation should hereafter take 
place for the benefit of the clergyman and the farmer, and how 
far it might be proper, this season, to lay a foundation .for such 
a measure! 

Pursuant to the above notice, Mr. Grattan addressed the 
House, on Tuesday, 13th March, to the following effect: 

" Sir, in this .session we have, on the subject of tumults, made 
some progress, though we have not made much. It has been ad- 
mitted that such a thing does exist among the lower order of 
people as distress ; we have condemned their violence, we have 
made provisions for its punishment, but we have admitted also, 
that the peasantry are ground to the earth ; we have admitted 
the fact of distress. 

" We have gone further ; we have acknowledged that thig. dis- 
tress should make part of our parliamentary inquiry — we have 
thought proper, indeed, to postpone the day, but we arc agreed, 
notwithstanding, in two things — the existence of a present dis- 
tress, and the necessity of a future remedy. 

" A multitude of particulars would be tedious ; but there are 
some features so very striking and prominent, we cannot avoid 
the sight of them. Our present syst.em of supporting the clergy, 
is liable to radical objections : in the south, it goes against the 



ON TITHES. 349 

first principle of human existence ; in the south, you tithe pota- 
toes. Would any man believe it 1 the peasant pays, I am in- 
formed, often 71. an acre for land, gets Qd. a day for his labour, 
and pays from eight to twelve shillings for his tythe ! — If the 
whole case was- comprised in this fact, this fact is sufficient to 
call for your interference : it attacks cultivation in its cradle, 
and tithes the lowest, the most general, and the most compas- 
sionate subsistence of human life : the more severely felt is this, 
because it is chiefly confined to the south, one of the great re- 
gions of poverty. In Connaught, potatoes do not pay tithe ; in 
the north, a moderate modus takes place when they do pay ; but 
in the south they do pay a great tithe ; and in the south you have 
perpetual disturbances ! "That the tithe of potatoes is not the 
only distress, I am not now to be informed. 6/. or 71. an acre 
for land, and 6d. a day for labour, are also causes of misery ; but 
the addition of eight, ten, or twelve sliillings tithe, to the two 
other causes, is, and must be, a very great aggravation- of that 
misery ; and as you cannot well interfere in regulating the rent 
of land, or price of labour, I do not see that you therefore should 
not interfere where you can regulate and relieve ; I do not see 
why you should suffer a most heavy tithe to be added to the 
high price of rent, and the low price of labour ; neither am 1 
sensible of the force of that supposition, which conceives a dimi- 
nution of the tithe of potatoes would be only an augmentation 
of the rent ; for I do not find that rent is higher in counties wkere 
potatoes are not tithed ; nor can I see how an existing lease can 
be cancelled, and the rent increased, by the diminishing or ta- 
king off the tithe ; neither do I see that similitude between tithe 
and rent, which should justify the comparison ; rent is payment 
for land, tithe is payment for capital, and labour expended on 
land ; the proportion of rent diminishes with the proportion of 
the produce, that is, of the industry — the proportion of tithe in- 
creases with the industry ; rent therefore, even a high rent, may 
be a compulsion on labour, and tithe a penalty. The cottager 
does pay tithe, and the grazier does not ; the rich grazier, with 
a very beneficial lease, and without any system of husbandry, is 
exempted, and throws the parson on labour and poverty. As 
this is against the first principle qf husbandry, so another regula- 
tion is against the first principle of manufacture. You tithe flax, 
rape, and hemp, the rudiments of manufacture. Hence, in the 



350 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

north, you liave no flax farmers, though there are n^any who 
cultivate flax. You give a premium for the growth of flax, a 
premium for the land carriage and export of corn, and you give 
the parson the tithe of the land, labour, and cultivation occupied 
therein, contrary to the prosperity of either ; as far as you have 
settled, you are wrong, and wrong where you have unsettled. 
What is the tithe is one question, v^^hat is titheable is another. 
Claims have been made to the tithe of turf, the tithe of roots ; 
moduses have been disputed, htigation has been added to op- 
pression ; the business has been ever shamefully neglected by par- 
liament, and has been left to be regulated, more or less, by the 
dexterity of the tithe-proctor, and the violence of the parish ; so 
that distress has not been confined to the people, it has extended 
to the parson ; your system is not only against the first principle 
of human existence — againsf the first principle of good husbandry 
— against the first pi'inciple of manufacture — against the first 
principle of public quiet — it goes also against the security and 
dignity of the clergy. Their case has been reduced to two propo- 
sitions — that they are not supported by the real tithe or tenths, 
and that they are supported by a degrading annual contract ; 
the real tithe or tenth is therefore unnecessary for their support, 
for they have done without it ; and the annual contract is im- 
proper, by their own admission, and the interference of parlia- 
ment proper therefore. Certainly the annual contract is below 
the dignity of a clergyman ; he is to make a bargain with the 
squire, the farmer, and the peasant, on a subject which they do, 
and he does not understand ; the more his humanity and his erudi- 
tion, the less his income ; it is a situation where the parson's pro- 
perty falls with bis virtues, and rises with his bad qualities. Just 
so the parishioner — he loses by .being ingenuous, and he saves by 
dishonesty. The pastor of the people is made a spy on the hus- 
bandman ; .he is reduced to become the annual teazing contrac- 
tor and litigant, with a flock among whom he is to extend reli- 
gion by his personal popularity ; an agent becomes necessary for 
him ; it relieves him in this situation, and this agent or proctor 
involves him in new odium and new disputes ; the squire not. sel- 
dom defrauds him, and he is obliged to submit in repose and pro- 
tection, and to reprize on the cottager ; so that it often happens 
that the clergyman shall not receive the thirtieth, and the pea- 
sant shall pay more than the tenth ; the natural result of this js 



ON TITHES. 851 

a system which makes the parson dependant on the rich for his 
repose, and on the poor for his subsistence. I am sure the spirit 
of many clergymen, and the justice of many country gentlemen, 
resist such an evil in many cases ; but the evil is laid in the law, 
which it is our duty and interest to regulate. 

" From a situation so ungracious, from the disgrace and loss of 
making in his own person a little bargain with squires, farmers, 
and peasants, of each and every description, and from non-resi- 
dence, the parson is obliged to take refuge in the assistance of a 
character, by name a tithe-farmer, and by profession an extor- 
tioner; this extortioner becomes part of the establishment of the 
church ; by interest and situation, there are two descriptions of 
men he is sure to defraud, the one is the parson, the other the peo- 
ple. He collects sometimes at fifty per cent ; he gives the clergy- 
man less than he ought to receive, and takes from the peasants 
more than they ought to pay ; he is not an agent who is to collect 
a certain rent ; he is an adventurer, who gives a certain rate for 
the privilege of making a bad use of an unsettled claim ; this claim 
over the powers of collection, and what is teasing or provoking 
in the law, is in his hand an instrument not of justice but of 
usury; he sometimes sets the tithes to a second tithe farmer, so 
that the land becomes a prey to a subordination of vultures. 

" In arbitrary countries, the revenue is collected by men who 
farm it, and it is a mode of oppression the most severe in the 
most arbitrary country ; the farming of the revenue is given to 
the Jews. We introduce this practice in the collection of tithes, 
and the tithe-farmer frequently calls, in aid of Christianity, the 
arts of the synagogue ; — obnoxious on account of all this, the un- 
offending clergyman, thrown oif by the rich upon the poor, cheat- 
ed most exceedingly by his tithe-farmer, and afterwards involved 
in his odium, becomes an object of outrage ; his property and 
person are both attacked, and in both the religion and laws of 
your country scandalized and disgraced. The same cause which 
produces a violent attack on the clergyman among the lower or- 
der of the community, produces among some of the higher orders 
a languor and neutrality in defending him. Thus outraged and 
forsaken he comes to parliament ; we abhor the barbarity, we 
punish the tumult, we acknowledge the injury, but we are afraid 
of administering any radical or effectual relief; because we are 
afraid of the claims of the church ; they claim the tenth of what- 
3X 



352 SPEECH IN THE DEBATE 

ever by capital, industry or premium, is produced from land. 
One thousand men claim this, and they claim this without any 
stipulation, for what appears for the support of the poor, the 
repair of the church, or even the residence of the preacher. 
Alarmed at the extent of such a claim, we conceive that the 
difficulty of collection is our security, and fear to give powers 
which may be necessary for the collection of customary tithes, 
lest the clergy should use those powers for the enforcing of a long 
catalogue of dangerous pretensions. We have reason for this 
apprehension ; and the last clause in the riot-act has prompted 
a clergyman in the south to demand the tithe of Agistment, and 
to attempt to renew a confusion which your act intended to com- 
pose. The present state of the clergyman is, that he cannot col- 
lect his customary tithe without the interference of parliament ; 
and parliament cannot interfere without making a general regu- 
lation, lest any assistance now given should be applied to the 
enforcement of dormant claims — ambiguous and unlimited. 

" Thus, I submit to this house, the situation of the clergy, as 
well as of the people, call on you to take up at large the subject 
of the tithe. You have two grounds for such an investigation — 
the distress of the clergy, and the distress of the people. 

" Against your interference three arguments are objected, two 
of which are fictitious, and one only is sincere. The sincere but 
erroneous objection is, that we ought not to affect in any degree 
the rights of the church ; to which I answer briefly, that if, by 
the rights of the church, the customary tithes only are intended, 
we ought to interfere, to- give and secure the full profit of them; 
and if, by the rights of the church, are meant those dormant 
claims I allude to, we ought to interfere to prevent their ope- 
ration. 

" Of the two arguments, that one on petitions relies on the im- 
possibility of making any commutation ; but this argument rather 
fears the change than, the difficulty. This argument is surely 
erroneous, in supposing that the whole wit of man, in parliament 
assembled, cannot, with all its ingenuity, find a method of pro- 
viding for 9000 persons. We, who provide for so large a civil 
list, military list, pension list, revenue list, cannot provide for the 
church. What ! is the discovery of the present income of the 
church an impenetrable mystery ? Or is it an impossibility to 
give the same income, but arising from a different regulation? 



ON TITHES. 353 

fixing some standard in the price of grain ; or if commutation be 
out of the power of human capacity, is this estabhshment of a 
modus impossible — different, perhaps, in the different counties, 
but practicable in all 1 Or if not practicable, how comes it, that 
there should be a modus established in some parts of Ireland al- 
ready for soni'e titheable articles ? Is it impossible to have a 
moderate modus on corn, and some modus on pasture ? Or to 
lay on potatoes a very small modus, or rather to exonerate them 
as well as flax 1 Would it not be practicable to get rid of the 
tithe-farmer, and give his plunder between the people and the 
parson ? If all this be a difficulty, it is a difficulty whijh is wor- 
thy of you ; and if you succeed in any part of it, you do service. 

"The other argument rglies on the times; and I acknowledge 
they are an objection to the bill at present, but none against the 
laying the foundation now, of a measure^ to take place on the 
restoration of public peace ; it may be an inducement to that 
peace, it cannot be an incentive to the contrary ; it is giving 
government the full force of reward and punishment ; and I ap- 
prehend, if no step whatsoever was taken, and no debate intro- 
duced at present, nothing would be done in future. 1 shall there- 
fore trouble you with a motion now, and next session, with a bill 
on that subject." * • 

He then moved the following resolution : 

" That, if it shall appear, at the commencement of the next 
session of parliament, that.public tranquillity has been restored 
in those parts of the kingdom that have been lately disturbed, 
and due obedience paid to the laws, this house will take into con- 
sideration the subject of tithes, and endeavour to fcTrm some plan 
for the honourable support of the clergy, and the ease of the 
people." 

2y 



SPEECH OF MR. GRATTAN, 

ON 

THE RIOT ACT ; * * 

OR, BILL TO PREVENT TUMULTUOUS RISINGS AND ASSEMBLIES. 



PREFATORY OBSERf ATIONS. 

The debate which took place in the Irish House of Commons 
upon this Bill, is so particularly calculated to demonstrate the 
wisdom of those mieasures, which were recommended by Mr. 
Grattan, when giving his opinion of the operation of tithes on the 
industry and feelings of Ireland ; the compilers of this volume 
conceived that they would commit no very serious chronological 
error, by giving the following speech, immediately aftet those, 
which though in poijjt of time it preceded, are best illustrated by 
a practical comment on the violence and pride displayed in the 
Irish riot act, for the prevention of tumultuous risings and as- 
semblies. In this bill, brought in and recommended by the late 
Lord Clare (who was then Attorney-general) will be found that 
species of remedy, which skims the surface of public injury, while 
it leaves the thorn which festered and tortured the patient, still 
rankling in the wound, and eating into its miserable victim. 

On the 31st January, 1787, when the house was in committee, 
upon that part of the address to the lieutenant, which related to 
the disgraceful commotions then raging in the wesf of Ireland, 
the Attorney-general submitted to the house the following narra- 
tive of facts, on which he intended to found his bill, for the pre- 
vention of tumultuous risings and assemblies. He stated the rise 
and progress of the disturbance ; " the commencement," said he, 
" was in one or two parishes in the county of Kerry, and they 
proceed thus : — The people assembled in a catholic chapel, and 
there took an oath to obey the laws of Captain Right, and to 
starve the clergy ; they then proceeded to the next parishes, on 

354 



SPEECH ON THE RIOT ACT. 355 

the following Sunday, and there swore the people in the same 
manner, with this addition, that they (the people last sworn) 
should on the ensuing Sunday, proceed to the chapels of their 
next neighbouring parishes, and swear the inhabitants of those 
parishes in like manner ; — proceeding in this, manner, they very 
' soon went through the province of Munster ; the first object was 
the reformation of tithes ; they swore not to give more than a 
certain price per acre ; not to assist, or to allow them to be as- 
sisted in drawing the tithe, and to permit no proctor ; they next 
took upon them to prevent the collection of parish cesses ; next 
to nominate parish clerks, and, in some cases, curates ; to say 
what church should or should not be repaired, and in one case 
to threaten that they would burn a new church, if the old one 
were not given for a mass-house ; at last they proceeded to regu- 
late the price of lands ; to raise the price of labour, and to op- 
pose the collection of the hearth-money and other taxes. Bodies 
of 5000 of them have been seen to march Ihi'ough the country 
unarmed ; and if met by any magistrate, they never offered the 
smallest rudeness or offence ; on the contrary, they had allowed 
persons charged with crimes, to be taken from amongst them by 
the magistrate alone, unaided by any force." 

The Attorney-general said, it would require the utmost abihty 
of parliament to come to the root of those evils ; he did not be- 
lieve that there was the least ground to accuse the clergy of ex- 
tortion ; far from receiving the tenth, he knew of no instance 
where they received the twentieth part ; he was well acquainted 
with the province of Munster, and that it was impossible for hu- 
man wretchedness to exceed that of the peasantry of that province ; 
the unhappy tenantry were ground to powder by relentless land- 
lords ; that far from being able to give the clergy their just dues, 
they had not food or raiment for themselves ; the landlord 
grasped the whole : and sorry was he to add, that not satisfied 
with the present extortion, some landlords had been so base as 
to instigate the insurgents to rob the clergy of their tithes — not 
in order to alleviate the distresses of the tenantry, but that they 
might add the clergy's share to the cruel rack-rents already paid ; 
the poor people of Munster lived in a more abject state of povetry 
than human nature could he supposed equal to hear ; their miseries, 
it is true, were intolerahle, but they did 7iot originate with the 
clergy, nor could the clergy stand by and. see them take the re- 



356 SPEECH ON THE 

dress into their own hands ; — upon the best consideration which 
he had been able to give the subject, two circumstances, which 
had contributed to spread the commotions, required to be imme- 
diately corrected. 

The first was, that under the existing law, the kind of com- 
bination which pervaded the province of Munster, was- deemed 
but a misdemeanour — a bailable offence ; and no magistrate 
could refuse to take bail for it. 

The second was, the criminal neglect and insufficiency of ma- 
gistrates throughout the disturbed part of the country. To check 
those alarming acts, he would bring in a bill, which contained 
such provisions as were calculated to inflict adequate and 
effectual punishment, on persons guilty of outrage, riot, and 
illegal combination ; and of administering and taking unlawful 
oaths. 

• After this candid admission, by the attorney general, of the ex- 
treme wretchedness and misery of the peasantry of the west of 
Ireland; and after the confession, that the 'application of an ade- 
quate and sufficient remedy to heal the pubUc wounds, would re- 
quire all the talents and understanding of parliament, it will not 
be forgotten, that the same law ofiicer opposed every effort made 
by Mr. Grattan to institute an inquiry into the real cause of the 
public grievances ; and that the Irish government of 1788 
closed their ears against the suggestions of those mild remedies 
which would have restored peace a?id comfort to the poor of 
Irela7id! 

The bill now brought in, by the attorney general, for prevent- 
ing tumultuous risings and assemblies, was opposed in every stage 
by the patriots of the day ; as containing clauses unnecessary and 
unconstitutional. They objected, that the deviations from the 
English riot act were all founded in the greatest severity, with the 
additional consideration, that the Irish act was to be perpetual. 

The attorney general supported the deviations from the Eng- 
lish riot act ; but gave up the most odious and objectionable 
clause — directing the magistrates to demolish the Roman catholic 
chapels, in which any com'binations had been formed, or an un- 
lawful oath administered. 

The secretary, Mr. Orde, lamented that any thing should have 
appeared in print, purporting that those insurrections had arisen 
from a popish conspiracy ! — He declared, he not only did not be- 



RIOT ACT. 357 

Heve it, but he could say, he k?2ezo it 7iot to be true ; and asserted, 
that in some places the insurgents had deprived the Roman 
catholic clergy o( ofie half of their income. 

Upon this occasion, Mr. Ciirran came forward, with his accus- 
tomed boldness, to arraign the wisdom, the expediency, and the 
humanity of the bill, proposed. by tlie attorney-general, for the 
suppression of disturbances, " What," said Mr. Curran, " has been 
the etfect of your sanguinary code against Ireland 1 The over- 
strained security of your law, amounts universally to the inipunity 
of the offender ; for every good and social principle in the heart 
of man, is an obstruction to its execution. — The witness, the judge, 
and the jury, concur, by every practical artifice, to save the 
wretch from a punishment inadequate to the crime. I will ever 
oppose the principle of a bill, that is zoritten in blood. The gen- 
eral principle receives double strength, from the double circum- 
stance of the times. 

" The disturbances of the south were not only exaggerated be- 
yond the truth, by every misrepresentation of artful malignity, 
but were held up to the public mind in so silly, or so wicked a 
point of view, as to make it impossible for parliament to proceed, 
without the most imminent danger of sacrificing every advantage 
we have acquired. What has been the state of your ecclesiasti- 
cal polity for centuries ? The churlRh of Ireland has been in the 
hands of strangers, advanced to the mitre, not for their virtues or 
their knowledge, but quartered on the country through their own 
servility, or the caprice of their benefactors ; inclined naturally 
to oppress us, to hate us, and to defame us ; while the real duties 
of our religion have been performed by our own native clergy ; 
who, with all the finer feelings of gentlemen and scholars, have 
been obliged to do the drudgery of their profession, for forty, or 
at most (or fifty pounds a year ; without the means of being liberal, 
from their poverty ; and without the hope of advancing themselves 
by their learning or their virtues — in a country where prefer- 
ment was notoriously 720^ to be attained by either. 

" On this ground, I would vindicate the great body of the na- 
tive acting clergy of Ireland from any imputation, because of the 
small progress which protestantism had made among us; the 
pride of episcopacy, and the low state to which our ministers of 
the gospel were reduced, abundantly accounted for it ; their dis- 



358 SPEECH ON THE 

tresses and oppression were the real objects of parliamentary 
consideration ; and not the discovery of new modes of torture, or 
the enactment of new statutes of blood." 

JVb man is to be found, in the history of the Irish parliament, 
more distinguished for his sensibility to the distresses and sufferings 
of his countrymen, of every religious persuasioii — his fearless and 
manly assertion of their claims to the attention, the protection, 
and the justice of the legislature, than Mr. Curran, (now master 
of the rolls.) 

It is impossible to read over the parliamentary history of Ire- 
land, for the last thirty years, without making frequent pauses, 
to admire the steady political virtue, the enlightened, liberal, and 
comprehensive views, the unrivalled efforts of genius and of wit, 
of our greatly gifted countryman. 

Few Irishmen ever attained so proud and so exalted a situation, 
as that which Mr. Curran now fills, with such inflexible indepen- 
dence of principle, or of demeanour, or so little humility to men 
in power and authority. He has risen, by the splendor of his 
talents, and the integrity of his views, to an almost unexampled 
degree of public confidence. He is one of the very few, whose 
constancy to his country has been rewarded by the possession of 
honours, and emoluments ; and was it not for that happy inter- 
val, when the great and b^evolent mind of Charles Fox com- 
manded an ascendency in the councils of his Majesty, we should 
not now perhaps be able to congratulate our countrymen, on the 
justice which has been done to the transcendant merits of their 
first advocate, and perhaps the first advocate in the British empire. 

When the politicians of the day, who, (with some exception) 
have risen in this country, as they gave up its liberty and its 
honour, shall be mingled in the dust, with the hundreds whose 
example they have imitated ; when no record will be found of 
their memory, nor no recollection of their names, our illustrious 
Curran will be the theme of every Irish seminary, the bright and 
glowing example of political virtue, in an age of universal syco- 
phancy, and national degradation. 

The efforts of Mr. Curran, as well as the great and splendid 
struggles of Mr. Grattan, zoere in vain ,• laws of severity were 
preferred to measures of redress and conciliation. The pride of 
the legislature would not be seen to capitulate to a barbarous 



RIOT ACT. 359 

multitude, and a civil war was preferred, by the administratiop 
of those days, to the heahng balsam of parental consideration for 
the acknowledged sufTerings and miseries of the poor. 

The riot act was the fruit of this 7nagnanimous spirit, ])0ssessing 
all the violence of the English act, with scarcely a single provi- 
sion of mercy or of humanity. 

To this act, Mr. Grattan spoke as follows : 

" Mr. Speaker, Sir, it. is impossible to hear that bill read, or the 
question put on the conjmittal of it, without anim.adversion. I 
agree that the south should be coerced. If the populace or pea- 
santry'of that district have thought proper to invade personal 
security, and lay the foundation of undermining their own liber- 
ties ; if they have resorted to the exercise of torture, as relief for 
poverty, I lament their savage infatuation, and I assent to their 
punishment. I assent to it with shame ; 1 blush at the cast of 
lawlessness thrown on the country, and I lament the necessity 
of a strong measure, the natural result of shabby mutiny and 
abortive rebellion. 

" This is not the first time I have had occasion to express my 
concern at certain excesses of some part of our fellow subjects. 
See the fruit of those excesses ; see the glorious effect of their 
labour, a riot act, aggravated, a riot act, ge?ieral and perpetual. — 
Evils which it was chance to foresee, it becomes now my duty to 
mitigate. 

" I will agree to the strengthening of the civil magistrate 
within a certain limitation ; I would enable the magistrate to dis- 
perse such meetings as are notoriously for illegal purposes ; and I 
will agree that it is proper not to admit persons to bail who had 
refused to disperse, as it could only furnish them with an oppor- 
tunity of repeating their transgressions. I will agree that the 
persons who dug graves, provided gibbets and the like, should 
be punished capitally ; for those who made torture their amuse- 
ment, and practised such inexorable barbarity, I think merit 
death. 1 vvill also agree that there are several clauses in the 
riot act, which it may be proper to adopt. But in the very set- 
ting out of the bill, there is an evident departure from, and con- 
tradiction of, the riot act. The riot act stated, that if twelve or 
more persons, riotously, tumultuously, and unlawfully assembled, 
and refused to disperse, &c. but this act stated, if persons to the 
3Y 



360 SPEECH ON THE 

number of twelve or more, riotously, tumultuously, or unlawfully 
assembled. — The former was copulative ; the latter disjunctive ; 
and the difference was, that coming within any one of the de- 
scriptions, tumultuous, riotous, or unlawful, felony would ensue ; 
though in England, to constitute the crime, each must be alleged. 
And when there is a deviation from the riot act, I am very sorry 
to find it is not one founded in mildness and mercy, but one 
founded in severity. Another difference from the riot act is, that 
in England the proclamation is obliged to be read ; but by this 
bill, nothing more was required of the magistrate than to com- 
mand the rioters to disperse, in the king's name. If they did not 
disperse in one hour, death was the consequence ; and this I con- 
sider as putting an hour glass in the hand of time, to run a race 
against the lives of the people ; and this is certainly a great ob- 
jection. 

" Another objection is, that if a magistrate was stopped, when 
repairing to the place of riot, the person who stopped him would 
be guilty of felony ; that was, though the magistrate w^as re- 
sorting to an unlawful place, the person who obstructed him 
should be deemed to merit death. And if the persons did not 
disperse, if the magistrate was interrupted, the reckoning of time 
was to commence from the moment of his obstruction ; and should 
they continue one hour they would be guilty of felony, and incur 
the punishment of death ; that is, the interception of a magistrate, 
at a distance in this kingdom, was to be tantamount to the read- 
ing of a proclamation on the spot in England. 

" This I think one of the severest clauses that was ever brought 
forward, or ever adopted. But even though this had been .pre- 
mised of the English riot act, the measure of their severity should 
not be a measure for the legislation of the house : if it should, 
it would be bad in principle, and worse in practice. 

*' Another clause of the bill made it felony to write, print, pub- 
lish, send or carry any message, letter, or notice, tending to ex- 
cite insurrection — that is, that a man, who shall write or print 
any letter or notice, shall be guilty — of what — of felony ! Like 
the Draconian laws, this bill had hlood ! blood ! — felony ! felony ! 
felony ! in every period and in every sentence. 

" Now had this bill been law for some time past, what would 
be the situation of every man who printed a newspaper for the 
last nine months ? 



RIOT ACT. 361 

" What would be the situation of every man who had written 
upon the subject of tithes? For as the right of the clergy to 
tithes is acknowledged to be founded in law, and as the papers 
and writers have argued against them, what would be the con- 
sequfence ? Who could tell how their conduct might be construed 
in' a court of law ? or whether they might not be adjudged guilty 
of felony ? But I will not ask who would be guilty under such 
a law ; but I will ask who would not be guilty 1 

" A perpetual mutiny-bill had been once the law of the land, 
and yet gentlemen both spoke and wrote against it as dangerous, 
unconstitutional, and beyond the power of parliament to sanction. 

" Had this bill been then law, they would have all been guilty 
of felony, and suffer death. Who could tell in what manner the 
words tending to excite disturhajice might be interpreted ? The 
clause respecting the taking of arms, and ammunition, or money 
to purchase them, bears a similarity to the white-boy act ; but 
the white- boy act was more guarded. 

*• Now look to the clause which prostrates places of public 
worship. — I consider it as casting a stain of impiety on the whole 
nation, and enjoining the magistrates, to commit that very act 
of violence, which is punished with, death in the peasantry. 

" It is a revival of the penal laws, and that in the most dan- 
gerous and exceptionable part. — I call upon gentlemen to con- 
sider, that* they had no charge against the catholics to warrant 
this measure — to consider, that they had not so much as cause 
for suspicion of them — to consider, if they were a popish peasantry, 
they were actuated by no popish motive ; — to consider, that pub- 
lic thanks had been returned to the principal person of the ca- 
tholic religion in this country, for his manly exertions to maintain 
the public peace, and to protect the rights of the established 
clergy ; and I think, if there be any thing sacred or binding in 
religion, it would operate successfully against the present mea- 
sure ; for it would cast a stigma on the protestant religion. 

" I have heard of transgressors being dragged from the sanctu- 
ary, but I never heard of the sanctuary being demolished ; it 
went so far as to hold out the laws as a sanction to sacfilege. — 
If the Roman cathoUcs were of a different religion, yet they have 
one common God and one common Saviour with gentlemen them- 
selves ; and surely the God of the protestant temple, was the God 
of the catholic temple. 

2z 



362 SPEECH ON THE 

" What then does the clause enact ? that the magistrate shall 
pull down the temple of his God — and if it be rebuilt, and as of- 
ten as it is rebuilt for three years, he shall again prostrate it, 
and so proceed in a repetition of .his abominations, and thus stab 
the criminal through the sides of his God— a. new idea indeed. — 
But this was not all ; the magistrate was to sell by auction the 
altar of the Divinity to pay for the sacrilege that had been com- 
mitted on his house. By preventing the chapel from being 
erected, I contend that we must prohibit the exercise of religion 
for three years ; and that to remedy disturbance, we resort to 
hreligion, and endeavour to establish it by act of parliament. A 
commission of the peace might fall into the hands of a clergyman, 
and this clause first occasion him to preclude the practice of re- 
ligion for three years, then involve him in vile abominations, and 
afterwards he must preach peace upon earth and good will to- 
wards men. With regard to the clause respecting the obstruc- 
tion to the collection of tithes, I do not know how far it may be 
proper to go into the question of tithes ; I conceive it would not 
be proper at all, if not generally. But since the clergy have with 
such ability, shown their right to tithes, by ecclesiastical and 
civil law, and that a resistance to the collection of that property, 
tmder the laws, was improper, the house would find itself in a 
strange predicametit for its owji vote of agistment. If tithes were 
legal, the house by that vote certainly deprived the clergy of a 
great part of them. 

" I wish to have the clergy supported ; I think the dignity of the 
country requires it ; but as to making new laws for the purpose, 
I think that part of another business. Perpetuity was another 
principle of the bill, and another objection to it. Would any 
man say that the coercion which might be necessary, from the 
turbulence of one period, would be requisite at all future times ! 
Was it to be handed down an inheritance to posterity 1 Would 
they tell the provinces of Ulster, Leinster, and Connaught, that 
they would reward their tranquillity in the same manner they did 
the turbulence in the south ? Was it to descend from the fathers 
to the children, as a kind of original sin, and death and felony 
to be spread in every quarter ? It was a fixed principle that 
the punishment should bear a proportion to the crime, but it was 
not attended to in the bill. Would any man say, that a man 
ought to be punished with death for writing, or influencing per- 



RIOT ACT. 363 

sons, I will say, by threats or otherwise ? I wish, if possible, to 
confine the operation of the bill to the offending counties, and 
contend, that if the bill is to pass in its present state (but that I 
believe to be impossible) I will venture to pronounce that it 
would be absolutely ineffectual ; for the crime would be overshot, 
and the feelings of humanity would revolt at the punishment : it 
would indeed be the triumph of the criminal and the stigma of 
the laws. I desire to know, whether it is meant to press the bill, 
with all its clauses ? whether it be intended to submit it to al- 
teration 1 — If the former, I will oppose it in the first instance ; if 
the latter should be acceded to I will vote for the committal." 



PATRIOTIC SPEECH 



MR. EMMET, 

AS DELIVERED AT THE SESSION HOUSE, DUBLIN, 
BEFORE LORD NORBURY. 



My Lords — ^What have I to say why sentence of death should 
not be pronounced on me, according to law 1 I have nothing to 
say, that can alter your predetermination, nor that it will be- 
come me to say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence 
which you are here to pronounce, and I must abide by. But I 
have that to say, which interests me more than life, and which 
you have laboured, (as was necessarily your office in the present 
circumstances of this oppressed country,) to destroy. I have 
much to say why my reputation should be rescued from the load 
of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it. 
I do not imagine that, seated where you are, your minds can be 
so free from impurity, as to receive the least impression from 
what I am going to utter — I have no hopes that I can anchor my 
character in the breast of a court constituted and trammelled as 
this is — I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect, that your lord- 
ships may suffer it to float down your memories untainted by the 
foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hospitable har- 
bor to shelter it from the storm by which it is at present buffeted. 
— Was I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by 
your tribunal — I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that 
awaits me without a murmur : but the sentence of law which 
delivers my body. to the executioner, will, through the ministry 
of that law, labour in its own vindication, to consign my charac- 
ter to obloquy — for there must be guilt somewhere : whether in 
the sentence of the court or in the catastrophe, posterity must 

364 



PATRIOTIC SPEECH OF MR. EMMET. 365 

determine. A man in my situation, my lords, has not only to en- 
counter the difficulties of fortune, and the force of power over 
minds which it has corrupted or subjugated, but the difficulties 
of established prejudice : — the man dies, but his memory lives : 
that mine may not perish, that it may live in the respect of my 
countrymen, 1 seize upon this opportunity to vindicate myself 
from sonnte of the charges alleged against me. When my spirit 
shall be wafted to a more friendly port ; when my shade shall 
have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed 
'their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defence of their 
country and of virtue, this is my hope ; I wish that my memory 
and name may animate those who survive me, while I look 
down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious 
government, which upholds its domination by blasphemy of the 
Most High — which displays its power over man as over the beasts 
of the forest — which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand 
in the name of God against the throat of his fellow v^^ho be- 
lieves or doubts a little more or a little less than the government 
standard — a government which is steeled to barbarity by the 
cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which it has 
made. 

\_Here lord Korhury interrupted Mr. Emmet, saying, that the mean 
and wicked enthusiasts who felt as he did, zcere not equal to the ac- 
complishment of their wild designs.'\ 

1 appeai to the immaculate God — I swear by the throne 

of Heaven, before which I must shortly appear — by the blood 
of the murdered patriots who have gone before me — that my 
conduct has been through all this peril and all my purposes, 
governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and by 
no other view, than that of their cure, and the emancipation of 
my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she 
has so long and too patiently travailed ; and that I confidently 
and assuredly hope, that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, 
there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this no- 
ble enterprise. — Of this I speak with the confidence of intimate 
knowledge, and with the consolation that appertains to that con- 
fidence. Think not, my lord, I say this for the petty gratification 
of giving you a transitory uneasiness; a man who never yet 
raised his voice to assert a lie, will not hazard his character with 
posterity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important to 



366 PATRIOTIC SPEECH 

his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my lords, a man 
who does not wish to have his epitaph written until his country 
is liberated, will not leave a weapon in the power of envy ; nor 
a pretence to impeach the probity which he means to preserve 
even in the grave to which tyranny consigns him. 

l^Here he was again interrupted by the court.'] 
Again I say, that what I have spoken, was not intended for 
your lordship, whose situation I commiserate rather than envy — 
my expressions were for my countrymen ; if there is a true Irish- 
man present, let my last words cheer him in the hour of his af- ' 
fliction — 

\_Here he was agai?i ijiterrupted. Lord JVorbury said he did i^et 
sit there to hear treason.'] 

I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge when a 
prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the 
law; I have also understood that judges sometimes think it their 
duty to hear with patience, and to speak with humanity ; to ex- 
hort the victim of the laws, and to offer with tender benignity 
his opinions of the motives by which he was actuated in the crime, 
of which he had been adjudged guilty : that a judge has thought 
it his duty so to have done, I have no doubt — but where is the 
boasted freedom of your institutions, where is the vaunted im- 
partiality, clemency, and mildness of your courts of justice, if an 
unfortunate prisoner, whom your policy, and not pure justice, is 
about to deliver into the hands of the executioner, is not suffered 
to explain his motives sincerely and truly, and to vindicate the 
principles by which he was actuated ? 

My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice, to 
bqw a man's mind by humiliation to the purposed ignominy of 
the scaffold; but worse to me than the purposed shame, or the 
scaffold's terrors, would be the shame of such foul and unfounded 
imputations as have been laid against me in this court : you, my 
lord, are a judge, I am the supposed culprit ; I am a man, you 
are a man also ; by a revolution of power, we might change pla- 
ces, though we never could change characters ; if I stand at the 
bar of this court, and dare not vindicate my character, what a 
farce is your justice ? If 1 stand at this bar and dare not vindi- 
cate my character, how dare you calumniate it ? Does the sen- 
tence of death which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, 
also condemn my tongue to silence and my reputation to re- 



OP MR. EMMET. 367 

proach ? Your executioner may abridge the period of my ex- 
istence ; but while I exist, I shall not forbear to vindicate my 
character and motives from your aspersions ; and as a man to 
w^hom fame is dearer than life, I will make the last use of that 
life in doing justice to that reputation which is to live after me, 
and which is the only legacy I can leave to those I honour and 
love, and for whom I am proud to perish. As men, my lord, we 
must appear at the great day at one common tribunal, and it 
will then remain for the searcher of all hearts to show a collec- 
tive universe who was engaged in the most virtuous actions, or 
actuated by the purest motives — my country's oppressors or — 

[^Here he was interrupted, and told to listen to the sentence of the 
lawJl 

My Lord, will a dying man be denied the legal privilege of ex- 
culpating himself, in the eyes of the community,of an undeserved 
reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with 
ambition, and attempting to cast away, for a paltry consideration, 
the liberties of his country 1 Why did your lordship insult me ? 
or rather why insult justice, in demanding of me why sentence 
of death should not be pronounced 1 I know, my lord, that form 
prescribes that you should ask the question ; the form also pre- 
sumes a right of answering. This no doubt may be dispensed 
with — and so might the whole ceremony of trial, since sentence 
was already pronounced at the castle, before your jury was em- 
pannelled ; your lordships are but the priests of the oracle, and I 
submit ; but I insist on the whole of the forms. 

\Hei-e the Court desired him to proceed.'] 
I am charged with being an emissary of France ! An emissary 
of France ! And for what end 1 It is alleged that I wished to 
sell the independence of my country ! And for what end ? Was 
this the object of my ambition ? And is this the mode by which 
a tribunal of justice reconciles contradictions? No, I am no emis- 
sary ; and my ambition was to hold a place among the deliver- 
ers of my country ; not in power, nor in profit, but in the glory of 
the achievement ! Sell my country's independence to France ! 
And for what 1 Was it for a change of masters ? No ! But for 
ambition ! O, my country, was it personal ambition that could 
influence me, had it been the soul of my actions, could I not by 
my education and fortune, by the rank and consideration of my 
family, have placed myself among the proudest of my oppressors ? 
3Z 



368 PATRIOTIC SPEECH 

My country was my idol ; to it I sacrificed every selfish, every 
endearing sentiment ; and for it, I now offer up my life. O 
God ! No, my lord ; I acted as an Irishman, determined on de- 
livering my country from the yoke of a foreign and unrelenting 
tyranny, and from the more galling yoke of a domestic faction, 
which is its joint partner and perpetrator in the parricide, for the 
ignominy of existing with an exterior of splendor and of conscious 
depravity. It was the wish of my heart to extricate my country 
from this doubly riveted despotism. 

I wished to place her independence beyond the reach of any 
power on earth ; I wished to exalt you to that proud station in 
the world. 

Connexion with France was indeed intended, but only as far 
as mutual interest w^ould sanction or require. Were they to as- 
sume any authority inconsistent with the purest independence, it 
would be the signal for their destruction ; we sought aid, and we 
sought it, as we had assurances we should obtain it ; as auxiliaries 
in war — and allies in peace. 

Were the French to come as invaders or enemies, uninvited 
by the wishes of the people, I should oppose them to the utmost 
of my strength. Yes, my countrymen, I should advise you to 
meet them on the beach, with a sword in one hand, and a torch 
in the other ; I would meet them with all the destructive fury of 
war ; and I would animate my countrymen to immolate them 
in their boats, before they had contaminated the soil of my 
country. If they succeeded in landing, and if forced to retire 
before superior discipline, I would dispute every inch of ground, 
burn every blade of grass, and the last intrenchment of liberty 
should be my grave. What I could not do myself, if I should fall, 
I should leave as a last charge to my countrymen to accomplish ; 
because I should feel conscious that life, any more than death, 
is unprofitable, when a foreign nation holds my country in sub- 
jection. 

But it was not as an enemy that the succours of France were 
to land ; I looked indeed for the assistance of France ; but I wished 
to prove to France and to the world, that Irishmen deserved to 
be assisted ! That they were indignant at slavery, and ready to 
assert the independence and liberty of their country. 

I wished to procure for my country the guarantee which 
Washington procured for America. To procure an aid, which. 



OF MR. EMMET. 369 

by its example, would be as important as its valour, disciplined, 
gallant, pregnant with science and experience ; who would per- 
ceive the good, and polish the rough points of our character ; they 
would come to us as strangers, and leave us as friends, after 
sharing in our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my 
objects ; not to receive new task-masters, but to expel old tyrants ; 
these were my views, and these only became Irishmen. It was 
for these ends I sought aid from France, because France, even as 
an enemy, could not be more implacable than the enemy already 
in the bosom of my country. 

\_Here he was intermpled by the court.'] 

1 have been charged with that importance in the efforts to 
emancipate my country, as to be considered the key-sto7ie of the 
combination of Irishmen ; or, as your lordship expressed it, " the 
life and blood of conspiracy." You do me honour over-much. You 
have given to the subaltern all the credit of a superior. There 
are men engaged in this conspiracy, who are not only superior to 
me, but even to your own conceptions of yourself, my lord ; men, 
before the splendor of whose genuis and virtues, I should bow 
with respectful deference, and who would think themselves dis- 
honoured to be called your friend — who would not disgrace 
themselves by shaking your blood stained hand — 
\_Here he was interrupted.'] 

What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to that scaffold, 
which that tyranny, of which you are only the intermediary exe- 
cutioner, has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for 
all the blood that has, and will be shed in this struggle of the 
oppressed against the oppressor? — shall you tell me this — and 
must I be so very a slave as not to repel it ? 

I do not fear to approach the omnipotent Judge, to answer for 
the conduct of my whole life ; and am I to be appalled and falsi- 
fied by a mere remnant of mortality here ? By you too, who, if 
it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have 
shed in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reservoir, your 
lordship might swim in it. 

[Here the Judge interfered.'] 

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dis- 
honour ; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could 
have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and 
independence ; or that I could have become the pliant minion of 
3« 



870 PATRIOTIC SPEECH OF MR. EMMET. 

power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. The 
proclamation of the provisional government speaks for our views ; 
no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or 
debasement at home, or subjection, hi'.miliation, or treachery 
from abroad ; I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, 
for the same reason that I would resist the foreign and domestic 
oppressor ; in the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon 
the threshold of my country, and its enemy should enter only by 
passing over my lifeless corpse. Am I, who lived but for my 
country, and who have subjected myself to the dangers of the 
jealous and watchful oppressor, and the bondage of the grave, 
only cO give my countrymen their rights, and my country her in- 
dependence, and am I to be loaded with calumny, and not suffer- 
ed to resent or repel it — No, God forbid ! 

If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns 
and cares of those who are dear to them in this transitory life — 
O ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father, look 
down with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffering son ; and 
see if I have even for a moment deviated from those principles of 
morality and patriotism which it was your care to instil into my 
youthful mind ; and for which I am now to offer up my life. 

My lords, you are impatient for the sacrifice — the blood which 
you seek, is not congealed by the artificial terrors which sur- 
round your victim ; it circulates warmly and unruffled, through 
the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which 
you are bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous, that they cry 
to heaven. — Be yet patient ! I have but a few words more to 
say. — I am going to my cold and silent grave : my lamp of life is 
nearly extinguished : my race is run : the grave opens to receive 
me, and I sink into its bosom ! I have but one request to ask at 
my departure from this world, — it is the charity of its silence ! — 
Let no man write my epitaph : for as no man who knows my 
motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance 
asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, 
and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times, and other 
men, can do justice to my character; when my country takes 
her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, 
let my epitaph be written. — I have done. 



